


Kick in the Teeth

by FauxPause



Series: Horizon Reached [1]
Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: AU as of Naxzela, Alchemy, Altean Lance (Voltron), Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Author is guilty of playing around with spacing and formatting for funsies and drama, Cosmo is less of a Hunter Companion and more of a heavily armed therapy dog, Cosmo the Wonder Wolf, F/M, FAMILY MEANS I MADE MYSELF CRY WHILE WRITING THIS AT LEAST TWICE, How do you make him stay and not report on what you say, How do you miraculously resurrect the dead~, How long was she in that forest anyway, I'm divesting Lotor of his leather pants, I'm showing my age with the 'Draco in Leather Pants' reference but idc, I'm still angry about most everything post s3, In this house we don’t murder Kuron, Kuron is Shiro (Voltron)'s Clone, M/M, Not my son you bitch, OHANA MEANS FAMILY, Romelle’s Tree Branch, Seriously this fic will be undergoing heavy editing, Time Travel, WIP, We save everyone including the dumb castleship, What do you do with a problem like clone Shiro, free form altean alchemy, guys help I made another massive au universe, made up post-canon, no leather pants for Lotor, step the fuck up canon
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-08-04
Updated: 2020-03-11
Packaged: 2020-07-31 04:46:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 23,943
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20109358
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FauxPause/pseuds/FauxPause
Summary: The time travel one-shot that ended up being more fun than expected.Roughly: Post-Canon Lance wakes up in the Red Lion just after Naxzela and kicks canon in the teeth about as hard as canon tanked his character development.*Spiraling out into a series...





	1. Chapter 1

Keith doesn’t hear the door open.

He doesn’t hear the door open and he doesn’t see whoever walks in and he doesn’t, until one pivotal moment, care.

He’s exhausted.

Back to back missions and the too-close brush of a full-chosen suicide run will do that.

He doesn’t hear the door _woosh_ open. He’s a little preoccupied with his roiling stomach from his near-miss, _so close_, with the Naxzelean shield. So he doesn’t see who walks through. Doesn’t _care_\- what does it matter, when he’s only going to leave again?

He does hear the _b__ang!_

It happens in less than a second. One moment Prince Lotor is trailing off his grand speech, yellow eyes locked on Princess Allura, watching her own pink-blue shimmer beneath fluttering lashes, hungry and parched and almost crazed as he stares her down.

Keith folds his arms over his aching ribs and looks away. It’s none of his business. Alliance, no alliance - it probably won’t affect anything for him. More missions, maybe.

He doesn’t see who walks through the door.

He does hear the _crack-boom_, the concussive noise that breaks his flight-or-fight instincts back to the surface, that herald Lotor’s feet leaving the ground. The so-called Prince flies backwards, as if someone’d yanked tight a rope around his neck. Keith has a fleeting glimpse of the soles of the prince’s pointed shoes before it all, Lotor and the situation both, comes crashing down.

It takes far too long for him to haul his aching body off the floor, thrown for cover at the first break of air without conscious choice, and longer still to trace the trajectory to the only advancing person.  
  
(_Death was still _so close_. Had he really made it back? Was this real or was he just-)_

It’s not his best response time.

He can practically hear Kolivan’s lecture. The shooter strides forward like a shark through a school of fish. They’re all swirling around the edges, voices melding and rising but ultimately meaningless because none of them are _moving_. Only the Princess, Shiro, and himself seem to have the drive to step forward through the panic.

He’s not paying attention to the details. There’s a stranger on the ship, they’re armed, they’re moving towards Allura and his brother.

He’s got all he needs to know right there.

Keith doesn’t waste his breath on curses, but he sure as hell thinks them loud and long as one more fact lines up; he won’t beat the stranger to Allura’s side.

They’re moving too fast, haven’t slowed since the door probably.

He can see Shiro closing in, slow, too slow. He’s not going to make it in time either.

Lotor raises up on his elbows, a spill of silver hair over purple armor and for a moment Keith thinks that’s going to be it. Pompous ass or not, there’s no denying the fact that the purple people pleaser is a warrior through and through. Clearly, it’d take more than a sudden blast to knock him- Two bright shots cut through the rising Prince, forcing him back to the floor with a soundless scream.

They’re precise, Allura’s hair not even ruffled in their wake. Keith can feel his knee start to give under him, his ribs are protesting his every movement, lungs transmitting their displeasure with each burning breath.

“Lance!”

He’s not sure who screamed first.

Not even sure if it _is _Lance and not some sort of stress-induced hallucination. (Lance in _flannel_, a farmers-tan darkening his skin, beltless with the Red Bayard sitting pretty in calloused hands. Keith can feel his head spin, hear his heart work double time. _Get up, get up, get up_. He looks-)

Shiro roars, cutting through the tension in the room, “What are you _doing _\- stand _down_!”

The order loses force as Keith loses air. A ringing starts in his ears, drowning out the electric crackle and glow of the charged blaster.

The gun wags, almost careless, from Shiro’s frozen form to a pod; sights returning immediately back to the Black Paladin’s head at the end of the gesture.

“Get in a pod.”

(There’s mud on his boots. Dark and loamy. The smell is achingly familiar. _He looks-)_

Shiro’s still staring, horror-struck and incredulous over at Lotor’s fallen figure.

“What are you doing?! He _saved _us. We owe-”

A shot grazes past Shiro’s ear, silencing the entire room. Keith skids to a halt a foot or two behind the - behind _Lance_. A wordless snarl rips through the room, exasperated and so _tired _that for a second, Keith thinks it’s his own.

“Lance, what are you-” Allura gasps, interrupted as Lance reaches down and hauls the bleeding, burned prince towards the pods by a limp arm.

Shiro bounces back, a volley of warning shots scoring the ground by his feet.

The prince groans through gritted teeth as Allura latches onto his other arm, suspending the man between the two like a rope in a fair game. Keith stays still, equally suspended between the achingly familiar blaster cradled in one hand and the power-bright muzzle pointed at Shiro’s face.

(Keith stops looking and _thinks_. He thinks; anyone else and it'd be a mistake. Body shots are easier- to make and to survive. Anyone else, any other finger on the trigger, and he wouldn't hesitate to rush them. Knock them off their feet, the gun from their hands, their head from their shoulders. But the stranger behind the trigger is_ Lance_; the team goofball, the team idiot, the best damn shot Keith’s ever seen even if he’ll never, ever, say as much aloud. They're not even five feet away. Shiro's life is practically tied by a string to Lance's trigger finger.

Headshot?

At this distance, Lance could probably pick which _eye_ to put the bullet through.)

“He saved my life.” Keith pitches in, swallows as the locus of attention falls suddenly on him, sensing- “When he brought down the shield. If he hadn’t I would have- I-” the dawning horror in Lance’s eyes confirms his niggling suspicion.

That he wouldn’t tell (_and despite it all he’s still _looking_, tracing a sharper jaw and tired eyes and he knows, if not for this - he wouldn’t ever tell_) the others how close to death he’d drawn today.

It blooms like a bruise through him. The realization that he really _was _just going to leave again. That he wasn’t going to stay, that he didn’t deserve to stay, that the others wouldn’t care enough to try and _keep _him-

The horror bleeds out of Lance’s eyes, taking all the warmth with it. Something furious stares back at him out of Lance’s face.

“Whatever he did,” and the rage there, in his voice and eyes, is barely leashed, is so barely recognizable as _Lance _that Keith nearly takes a step back, “He didn’t do it for you.”

He turns, and presses forward, yanking Allura a half step off-balance to slam Lotor into a raised pod. The Prince’s head jolts along the stem of his neck, teeth grit against the pain as he hits the cold metal shoulder first. The Princess rushes forward, easing Lotor the rest of the way in.

She glares up at the paladin for long moments, fingers working the controls without sight. The lid swipes up, frost hissing across their view of the prince.

(It’s pretty obvious she’s not doing this as a favor to the gun-toting paladin. He shot Lotor in the chest three times. It was starting to sink in. _Lance _shot _Lotor _in the chest three times. Keith bet he hit something vital, but not quite mortal, just to be petty. Lotor needed to be in that pod and he needed to be in there ten minutes ago. It was, Keith thought, probably the only reason Allura had yet to stab Lance, whip form bayard be damned.)

No one else turns their eyes away from the gun in Lance’s hand, still unrearingly pointed at Shiro. His arm is fully extended as he stares tenderly into Allura’s equally fierce eyes.

Keith’s fingers clench over the hilt of his blade, tracking the tension in broad shoulders, the broken edges poking out behind that tender, distracted, stare.

He’s not going to get a better chance.

“Don’t.”

He doesn’t turn to look at Keith, eyes still drinking an increasingly confused Allura in. (Keith just can’t stop himself. Little details, differences, start to cut through the adrenaline fueled haze.) Lance’s jaw is set, sharper and sun-worn and mulishly familiar. His eyes, though, are cold; sharp, like chips of ice. They drag like nails along the low tenor of his voice,

“Really, just don’t.”

Keith's footsteps feel loud, even through the padding of the suit. One, another. Then,

“Keith…” Lance seems to draw a breath, aware of Allura standing just behind him, gun unflinchingly leveled at Shiro, and makes the mistake of looking over. Or maybe, Keith thinks as he freezes between one step and the next, maybe Keith makes the mistake of looking back.

Those eyes, narrow and stubborn and so different from when he last saw them, months ago and ages past in his room asking if he’d need to stand down, if he needed to _leave _to _better the team_, sear into him, bore right through him. He’s trapped, caught. Caged and cornered and made _real _all at once.

(It sends the monster in his stomach writhing; pain and pleasure tangled up in one another. Ice-blue clawing into him and _looking-_)

They thaw.

He looks… broken, somehow. Lance closes his eyes for the beat of a heart but keeps the gun level. Keith doesn’t loosen his grip either. It’s a good thing he doesn’t because Lance's next words nearly cause him to falter.

“Trust me.”

Of all the-

“Please, I don’t want to hurt him. I haven’t!” Lance, _is it Lance?, _doesn’t gesture, doesn’t risk moving the gun at this juncture, but their attention is drawn to the dark splashes of missed shots spanning the space between the men regardless. “I just want him to get into a healing pod.”

Allura’s hand hasn’t left the hilt of her bayard, but she hasn’t drawn it either. Her eyes are as steady as Lance’s trigger finger. “You think Shiro is injured?”

“I _know _something is wrong.” He seems to realize that this isn’t going to win him any favors. “We were just on Naxzela, right? Shiro was in Black, he got hit first - the hardest of any of us.”

No one moves.  
  
“You don’t have to activate the cryo-freeze,” Lance starts to bargain, “Just let it scan him.”

The silence is starting to become overwhelming. The tension is even worse.

Everyone is on edge. Keith can feel his muscles knot, his knuckles ache from where they’ve been wrapped around his blade for the better part of ten minutes now.

(Never mind the hours before, nevermind the controls in that last, desperate, dive.)

He can see Allura tense, blue bayard curled into her closed palm. The flash of light as Hunk summons his gun but also the shift from the corner of his eyes as it’s planted, inactive and cold, against the Yellow Paladin’s hip. He can see the sweat drip down the side of Shiro’s face. Sees his thighs tense - preparing to move.

Because he’s_ looking_, he sees Lance’s arm bunch, brace, trigger finger curling just slightly. The thread pulls tight.

His heart quickens, rabbit fast as new adrenaline surges.

“Alright.”

Every head snaps back to Shiro at the sound of his voice. Even Lance looks incredulous. “What?”

Shiro shrugs, “I’ll get in a pod.” Grey eyes bore into blue. “I’ll get into a pod... and you’ll hand the red bayard over to Keith.”

The gun doesn’t so much as flicker in Lance’s hand even as he nods his consent. Allura, behind Lance’s head, nods at Shiro, her whip uncoiling to rest on the floor.

“I’ll get into a pod too if that’ll make you all _feel better _about this, but for cripes sake, dude, just get. In. The pod!”

It’s probably the urgency in his voice that causes them all to actually watch Lance watch Shiro turn and step into one of the four empty healing pods. The screen slides up and locks in. Shiro shrugs, the motion absurd and funny all at once, at them from within the confines of the pod. There’s a melodic _beep _as the diagnostic scans start up.

A flash of light pulls his gaze away from the pod as the lock click shuts. Keith’s eyes stutter over dark arms and ragged flannel, landing on the deactivated red bayard before stuttering to a tired halt and roving back over the already processed but not acknowledged information.

Gone is the blue paladin armor.

Gone are the skinny jeans and quarter sleeve t-shirt and oversized jacket. A sweaty, ragged, flannel hangs open over a bleached white tank top. Sun-dark skin peeks through the thin fabric. He looks work-worn and satiated, effortlessly comfortable and at once still ready for more. The flannel sleeves are rolled past his elbows, showing off a myriad of odd tan lines as Lance slouches in relief. The paladin(_?_) plants his hands on his hips and leans, cracking his back in a few places before flinging his bayard one-handed at Keith. It deactivates as soon as the last of his fingers leave it, gun disappearing in a shower of sparkles.

The paladin-turned-blade grunts as it impacts against his chest, growling lowly as a smirk curls the other’s lips.

“Ugh, that sucked.” Lance looks down at Allura. Or he tries to. The earlier tender looks, the desperate drinking gazes, seem to be spent. His eyes skitter over her face, bouncing there and then away over and over in a long moment. He eventually ends up staring a little past the top of her head. “Y-You know,” It takes a moment to realign his faltering grin, “I thought you were going to stab me for a minute there.”

She doesn’t look at all impressed with him though her bayard has deactivated too. “I still might. You may carry the red bayard but have you any proof otherwise?”

Lance, the stranger, the shooter, blinks down quizzically even as the others slowly draw near. “Proof of what?”

Allura's unimpressed look falls somehow flatter. Confused eyes slant over at Keith, seeking aid. He blinks back, thrown out of his depth by the bizarre trust conveyed in that one motion.

“Uh… your identity dude?”

Lance pouts, honest to god, _pouts _over at Hunk.  
  
“What? Oh, come _on_, Hunk, who else would I be?”

Pidge’s bayard flashes back to its neutral form. She shifts her glasses and peers up at him. Keith can hear her brain churning from here.

“Are you _older _?”

“Rude.”

“Cause the thing that’s died on your face looks like it's been there awhile.”

“Very rude!”

Lance’s hands clap over the scruff shadowing most of his lower jaw. It’s not… _that _bad, Keith reflects quietly. It’s just not something he’d ever thought of, in relation to Lance. He hadn’t seen a single hair anywhere but Lance’s head (even his arms had felt smooth that one time they’d tried to get to the pool.) He squints up at the other’s jaw (figures the bean pole was only going to get _taller_. He wondered if galra genes were just latent or if his dad’s Korean heritage had just won that round for good.) It’s different and hard besides to pick out against the other’s darker skin, but it’s there.

Not, he thought as he attached the bayard to his hip, that it mattered.

The lucite blade springs to life. “Get in the pod.”

Lance stills, shifting from animated to stone-still (_sniper_-still, that niggling voice reminds him) as the edge presses gently against his bare throat.

“Ahhey… easy there, Samurai.”

The blade presses in harder, skin dimpling under the deadly weight. (It’s a bit of stretch, alright? It takes less than a pound of pressure to part human skin - he had to be careful this close to someone’s throat. The sudden inches-odd difference in height wasn’t helping the situation at all).

Blue eyes bounce from the pods to Hunk, skittering over Allura and landing on Keith. He looks like he’s mulling something over. Which, well, Keith has no idea how much thought went into this episode in the first place but he figures giving Lance more time to think isn’t going to do the rest of them any favors.

He presses the blade forward again, blood beading delicately around the off-purple metal. Lance’s throat bobs, inadvertently creating more pressure, sending more blood welling up around the small cut.

Lance pans his gaze back to Hunk (who’s looking at Lance’s boots with pressed closed lips), right over Pidge’s head (eyes obscured by the light reflecting off her glasses) and over to Allura (the princess already has a pod open, one arm sarcastically inviting him to step into it. Her expression is hard, stern).

Lance sighs.

He walks forward without so much as a hint of warning, leaving Keith to yelp and pull the blade back before the idiot can willing slit open his own throat. A long line (shallow, thank-) beads red and spills over unnoticed. He grouses under his breath as he jimmies one long leg in and then the other.

“Y’all were never nearly this paranoid…”

Allura presses the command with a vengeance. Keith has a moment to be thankful that the pods lack manual doors. Allura would have likely broken the thing in an attempt to slam it shut over Lance’s wincing form.

* * *

He wasn’t in there for long.

Unlike with Shiro, they weren’t trying for a thorough health scan. Really all they needed to do was see if the pod would match Lance’s baseline scans saved to the castle.

Keith blinked as frost quickly coated the surface, effusing Lance’s almost exasperated (but oddly not surprised) expression.

“...you didn’t say you were going to freeze him.” He pointed out dryly.

Allura frowns at him, her disappointment easily parsed. Keith scowls back at the princess. She has no business looking at him like that when she’d been a few seconds away from all but melting into the so-called galran prince’s palm.

(The cryo-freeze was likely Allura being cautious as much as it was her being… petty seemed a bit unkind but more and more accurate with each delicate tick of her impatient brow.)

Frankly, the active Red Bayard was more than enough evidence for Keith. He turns to look at Pidge, “What are the odds that Re-”

Several screens pop up at once across the surface of the pod with cheerful, melodic chimes. Keith closes his mouth down on a smile, letting his question hang unfinished.

Allura nimbly closes out most of them as they appear, not even giving a cursory glance a the proffered data, quickly searching through to the largest one in the back.

A gusty sigh escapes the altean princess.

An image of Lance’s awed face, likely snapped as they all entered the castle for the first time, hangs next to a string of altean text.

Allura scowled. Blue-pink eyes cast over at Keith before returning to glare at the pod’s surface. “Stop looking so smug.”

“You should probably take him out of the pod now.” Keith pointed out.

The princess jabs a manicured nail into the screen and steps pointedly away.

A rumble later and Lance tipped headfirst out of the pod, steam still rising from his clothes. It was one of the fastest defrostings Keith’s ever seen. He glances over, ignoring the whining coming from the prone figure on the floor. Allura looks a little smug around her eyes.

A low groan rumbles out of the man on the ground as he hauls himself into a lazy seat on the floor.

“I did not miss that…” Lance rubs at his neck, palm knocking against his ear carelessly. He blinks slowly, lashes sticking together slightly before his eyes finally focus on the faces peering curiously down at him.

Lance looks at the pods like he’s contemplating crawling back inside one.

“Uh…Well. This sure is, uh, happening.”

Keith knew a stall for time when he heard one.

“Get off the ground.”

“Yeah, yeah geez. So much for ‘patience’ and ‘focus’.”

Lance planted a hand and levered himself to his feet.

Keith scoffed at the popping noises the taller emitted as he hauled himself up from the floor. “What’d’ you do? Turn into an old man at twenty? I’ve heard glowsticks make less noise than you.”

Lance just waggled a finger at Keith as he twisted to crack his back once more.

“Up-bhupbhupbhup! Nuh-uh. No questions about that from you. Not unless you wanna talk about whatever it was you almost pulled with the shield?”

Keith closed his mouth with a click.

“Yeah I didn’t think so, Samurai.” He flicked the previously wagging fingers from his eyes down at Keith. “This isn’t over though.”

Keith rolled his eyes, for a moment forgetting that it wasn’t _his _Lance he was talking to, “Sure. It’s not like I’ll be here for long. The Blade-”

Lance snaps his fingers. “That’s it!”

“What?”

“The Blade! That’s how I can,” He interrupts himself to turn to Allura, eyes skittering over her _again _even as he almost faces her. “Think we can call them over here?”

She scowls at him, suspicion clear even as she glides away to open a line to their allies.

Lance grins, eyes wide and more than little manic, and turns back to the huddle of paladins. “Once we find Shiro, we’ve got another road trip ahead of-”

That’s just too weird to let go. Even _he _has a threshold for these kinds of things, alright?

“What do you mean, ‘find Shiro’? He’s right over ther-” As if on a timed cue, the pod burst out into shrill chimes. Screens pop up and scroll data over the curved surface, obscuring Shiro’s worried form within.

He doesn’t remember moving. His fingers barely scrape the surface of the pod and then he’s nose deep in body-warm flannel.

Pidge and Allura are nearly standing on each other’s toes. Together they almost obscure the pod entirely from view, each reading different sections of the screen. Whatever they’re parsing, because it just looks like a blur of code and symbols to Keith, can’t be good.

(Maybe it’s his illness… Shiro’d been moving so much _better _since they came to space. Keith hadn’t questioned it. Had hoped maybe it’d been the different gravity, the lack of solar radiation, hell maybe even the _goo_. He’d just been glad that Shiro was doing better- he hadn’t wondered at the cause of it. Gift horses and mouths, his father’d said. He takes a deep breath and holds it.

The smell more than the breath shocks him out of that spiral; wood smoke and wet earth and something _alive_, almost floral, fills his head.)

Pidge is the first to step back. One step into two into three until she moores herself against Hunk’s reassuring bulk. “He’s…_ it’s _... that’s _not _Shiro.”

(He’ll be embarrassed later, that he’s allowed himself to be pressed into Lance’s side so docilely. But for now, it’s just - reassuring. The physical equivalent of a talk in red mist. Kind words from an unexpected source, warming and stable and exactly what he needs even when it wasn’t anything he’d ever think of asking for. A hand smooths down the back of his skull, fingers careful not to snag the knotted mess his mask and hood always, _always_, leave behind. Keith takes another deep breath.)

Pidge keeps going, small hands starting to shake even as she pulls her voice back under the iron control he respects so much, “I mean, it is - biologically. It’s an exact match for the one in the castle’s records but… but his quintessence, it’s-” Allura shakes her head and covers her mouth and steps away, eyes wide and tracking furiously over the still flowing data.

Lance reached forward, cupping her shoulder with a hand, “That’s not Shiro.” He looks down at Keith, eyes thawed and sad and something ugly inside Keith rears its head, slithers up his spine and glares out at that offered _pity_. 

Keith’s lips curl in a snarl and he rips himself away. The shock of cold all the reminder he needs that the stranger standing there isn’t exactly _Lance _either.

(He looks like an amalgamation of everywhere Keith has ever called home. A collage of his favorite things, people, places. Just staring at him stirs a heady feeling. Something thick and slow, molasses or honey, dripping through his veins. It _hurts_, prods at an ache he thought he’d left scabbed over long before the Garrison.)

They’re the last thing he sees before the bridge doors snap shut behind him.

(He presses his eyes closed, the bright, near fluorescent lights of the castleship burning through his lids. He breathes in and in and in until all he smells is the slightly stale recycled air. No smoke or sweat or life unknown. Just the empty, impartial, impersonal hallway and him.

He screams until his throat burns, rough and ragged around the edges. Like something else was trying to burst its way through him and bashed itself bloody against a barrier. It's still not enough.

Nothing ever is.)


	2. Chapter 2

The red bayard feels awkward in his hand. The grip is... wrong. Altered, somehow. Keith has the overwhelming feeling that, should it even transform for him, the pommel won’t fit quite right - not now. Not after activating _his _blade.

Not after so long without it, without _Red_.

He tries to keep his attention split among their hastily gathered allies. Pidge and Hunk flocking towards the Olkari even as Kolivan and the rest of the Blades he’s been working with stride towards the center of the room and, not so coincidentally, he thinks, Allura.

Mostly he ends ups staring at the spot where Shiro’s healing pod ought to be, reluctant to understand why, exactly, they’d allowed the pod to shift under the floor.

It felt permanent.

Of course it was then, split between staring at his former teammates and that empty space, that Lance made his reappearance.

He was still in that damn flannel. Still stomping through the halls in muddy work boots, bits of dried dirt flaking off with every step as he strode right into the heart of the room. He waves over at Pidge and Hunk, tossing a smile at the assembled allies as he moved confidently through the room.

It makes it all the more obvious that Lance can’t seem to look at Allura for long periods of time. With the exception of those long gaze they shared as the ‘time traveler’ wrestled Lotor into the pod, he’s only glanced at her from the corner of his eyes or not at all. Its horrible and telling and Keith can’t help but wonder what one-sided part of history is at play. Had Lance and Allura finally-?

“Kolivan, nice to see you walking!” Lance didn’t do anyone the favor of stopping to explain what that meant. He kept moving, lips, feet and waving hands all at once as he shoved his way through the gathered crowd. “Where is Krolia.”

It’s not a question and Keith can feel his jaw clench at the too-familiar tone. Looked like somethings would never change. Lance, brash and disrespectful as usual, asking after some girl in the middle of a war meeting. It made his teeth grind. Kolivan, though, barely glanced at the approaching human.

“Princess, it is good to see-” The galran leader doesn’t finish his sentence before Lance interjects once again.

“_Where _is Krolia.”

The blades flanking Kolivan bristle at the insult. Politics will never be Keith’s strong suit, but even he knows how to trace a chain of command. Lance cutting across Kolivan? In front of his men? He slips forward, aching hand once again readying to grasp his blade, before things escalate. Worst comes to worst, he still has the Red Bayard. Lance is unarmed and- Keith blinks and wonders if it’s just the lack of sleep or something else entirely.

Lance is unarmed and advancing on Kolivan.

It should look ridiculous. It does, really.

Kolivan is _huge_. He dwarfs Lance without any effort. Growth spurt or not, the Galra were a ludicrously tall race and closing distance with any of them, much less Kolivan’s eight foot something self, never made for a flattering comparison. This was no different.

Gold eyes narrow down at the human’s slighter frame. Disdainful and disinterested and slowly growing irate, if Keith were any judge. (And after the last few mont-er, movements, he really should be considered one.)  
  
It should slow Lance down.

Should have him hunch those broad shoulders, bend that proud neck. Send that sharp chin ducking down in the shame that he wears like a second jacket.

But the jacket is gone and so too is the easily cowed boy. Whoever, whatever, stands on the bridge in his place isn’t interested in shame or even, it seems, polite conversation.

“Remove your…” Kolivan swings a gold gaze over the assembled humans clearly connecting the obvious racial traits, “comrade from the bridge. Now.”

Lance doesn’t seem to have heard him, still advancing, “He deserves to _know_, Kolivan.” Still having a conversation that no one else is following or cares about.

He’s not slowing down though, stepping closer despite the galran hands on hilts and Allura’s increasingly stormy brows.

“He’s passed your trails. He’s stared death in the face.” The words curdle into a wet snarl as Lance’s gaze slides over Keith, “Today more than any other-”

Kolivan sounds almost bored. Impatient to move on. He stares at the Princess over Lance’s head, frowning as she refuses to call the human advancing on him to heel. “There is no way to ascertain whether he is-”

Lance spins in place, hands clenching around empty air. The surrendered bayard in Keith’s hands grows hot, almost vibrating between his fingers. Eager to leap to that calling hand, he thinks, and tightens his grip.

“You can track the energy off each individual blade, you-”

Kolivan finally turns to look at the near-shouting human. Gold eyes flash, one of the only signs of temper the reserved leader allows himself, “Even if the blade responds to him that is no indication-”

“-they’re like _signatures _to you people! I’ve seen you track Blades down across star systems and you won’t-”

“-jeopardize the safety of our numbers for the selfish desires of a-”  
  
Something snaps.

Blue light seeps out from high cheekbones, cutting swaths of color under narrowed eyes. Lance steps closer to Kolivan once more and then - in a series of heartbeats and in the blink of an eye, they’re nose to nose.

There’s a yelp and crash somewhere behind him but Keith can’t be arsed to turn and look because Lance’s skin is changing before his eyes. In the sharp light of the castle the rippling change from dark brown to a muddled purple is still almost subtle. The shift one smooth flush of color along long limbs. Lance’s calves lengthen, his ankles rise off the floor as his knees seem to bend and stretch and - and - Lance, is _snarling_, teeth gleaming in the light, canines long and sharp and bared in rumbled, impossible, defiance.

The bayard in his hand _burns_. Pain zings up his fingers as though his gloves weren’t even there, ratcheting right up through his elbow and the bruises mottling his shoulders. He drops the damn thing with a clatter and a hissed curse, purple eyes catching blue-pink as Allura’s head snaps across to the noise. She’s pale, eyes wide and almost panicked and it hits Keith with all the subtlety of a sledgehammer that the light show feels familiar because those hidden cuts of color are in the same damn shape as the pink crescents he’s looking at right now. Crescents he’s only seen on two other people which means that- that Lance-

“She’s his _mother _you-“

-and then none of it, not the time travel, not the impossible odds, not the fact that Lance is purple and inhuman and has a clawed hand clasped angrily along the ridge of Kolivan’s breastplate, matters.

“She’s alive?”

He means it to be an accusation, a bellow. It slips out, small and scared and as hurt as the rest of him into the air of the castle ship.

It cuts through the rising argument like a hot blade through butter, leaving silence bleeding in its wake.  
  
Lance spins in place, ignoring the shocked inhales as his skin smooths back to brown and his legs bend back to human proportions as he steps towards Keith, hands empty and held before him. The blue crescents under his eyes pulse with every breath in.

“Yes.” Lance nods emphatically, almost eagerly. “Her name is Krolia. She’s a high ranked member of the Blades.” He pauses to glare over his shoulder, “Kolivan has her on some long term mission-”

“-the importance of which you know _nothing of _-”

“-but I’m not sure where!”

The last word isn’t so much a statement of fact as it is an accusation. A small hand reaches up and gently tugs Lance’s arms down. The Lance freezes, eyes widening in shock, as if the enormity of what he’s done has finally caught up with him.

Allura and Lance lock gazes. This time neither of them can maintain eye contact for long. Each looking to the side within seconds. No one has missed that even that has caused the pair of them to well with tears.

Keith is pretty sure he has Allura figured out. Learning that not one, but two of her paladins aren’t quite as human as they seem is one thing. Lance revealing himself to be, at minimum partially, altean? That has to hurt. Still, the princess only blinks once, a firm press of her eyes, before casting her head high.

“Kolivan, with me.”

Allura cuts out of the room, strides measured and filled with the grace of a ruler in her palace. Which, he realizes with a jolt, she is. Keith cast his eyes away as she passed his position by the door, ignoring the slight shaking of Allura’s hands. If he didn’t call attention to it odds were no one else would catch it. Besides, it wasn’t like there wasn’t a convenient distraction right in the middle of the room.

Pidge practically flew up the steps and hauled Lance halfway to the floor, “You’re altean!”

“What? Who, me? No!” He flapped both hands, “No, I’m not!”

Keith felt a muffled echo of humor through the shock as Lance visibly flustered.

Shoot the galra prince in the chest? No problem.

Stare down the Black Paladin, the Princess of Altea _and _Keith into a compromise? Sure, why not.

Advance on the galaxy’s most infamous rebellion leader? Hell, if he thought he knew Lance at all he’d say the other’d _enjoyed _that.

But this? The smirk broke across his face without permission as Hunk cried foul, distracting Lance long enough for Pidge to start pinching at his skin. Lance was red as he could get, without _shapeshifting _apparently, and looked like he was once again considering activating a cryopod just to avoid this conversation.

“Lalalala! My round ears can’t hear your lies!!”

(He remembered Lance talking about his home, his family. His sisters. His mother. How important they were to him, how much he missed them.)

Somethings would never change.

Lance dropped his head with a full-body sigh. “Look, fine, could we at least continue this _after _I get some new clothes?”

He shivered and pulled the now seriously distressed flannel over his mostly bare torso. Keith felt his face flare hot, suddenly cognizant of the fact that Lance was more or less undressed after his little reveal; earthen clothes not at all prepared to handle the shift in mass from human to galra and back again. Even the toes of his sturdy looking boots had large holes in them and the thick denim had ripped away, leaving Lance’s legs bare from his thighs down. That flush ran from his cheeks down his neck and right across his bare ch-

“Shut up and follow me.”

He doesn’t wait to see if Lance is following.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you’re going to make Lance ‘altean’, make Lance ALTEAN you cowards.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> LAST TIME: Lance revealed that Keith’s mother, a high ranked BoM member named Krolia, is still alive. Allura dismissed the Paladins to negotiate with Kolivan for Krolia’s location. Meanwhile, Lance has revealed himself to be capable of Altean shapeshifting and is in dire need of new clothes.  
“Shut up and follow me.” He doesn’t wait to see if Lance is following.

“I forgot this place existed…” 

Lance trailed his hand along the wall before the door, oddly fond for what basically amounted to a storage closet. Keith kept his gaze centered on the door pad, deliberately _ not _ staring at the tensing abdominal and thigh muscles teasing the edges of his vision as Lance strolled leisurely behind him through the castle halls. 

_ Stupid long legs… _ At least the other hadn’t made some weird competition out of racing to the store room or something. Keith jerked his wandering eyes forward, biting firmly down on his own tongue to keep himself focused. Then again, he groused, that might have been better. He could have just sped ahead and left the other in his dust. 

His eyes slid back to the other’s casually loping strides. There was always the chance that this older Lance could out-pace _ him_. Then he’d be stuck with the view of that broad back and-

Keith jabbed the door open with more force than strictly necessary. 

You’d think a castle would have some sort of costume room, but apart from the piles of mostly destroyed clothes they’d pulled their mall disguises from, there really wasn’t much. Keith really hadn’t thought much on it until today. The pair surveyed the mostly barren room that smelled nothing like mothballs but looked as though it ought to. 

Lance popped a hand on one hip, “Not sure there’s much more in here than what I’ve already got.” He waved an empty hand over the tattered remains of his clothes with an amused grin.

Keith’s eyes followed the motion of Lance’s hand over his torso before jerking them back up. He swallowed, the noise echoing loudly in his own ears as those sharp blue eyes narrowed in focus, and spun to face the opposite wall, walking quickly over to the first open container he could reach.

Keith eyed the contents of the box and smirked, pulling a copy of Coran’s high collared shirt out so that it hung from one finger. 

“Guess we’re done here.”

The noise that sputtered out of Lance as he took in the white-blue shirt was gratifying, “Oh my gosh, _ no_.”

The laugh-filled refusals picked up in volume as Keith dug out the corresponding tights out of the box.

“_ Keith! _ Why would you betray me like this!” Lance moved the hand he had over his heart towards his face. “I can’t pull off-” he paused, interrupted by his own laughter, before miming twirling invisible facial hair, “-a _ moustache_!” 

“The only thing you have to ‘pull off’ are your old clothes.” He said dryly and then flushed bright red as Lance’s head popped back up with waggling brows. 

Lance’s hands moved to the fastenings of his jeans, fingers deftly popping the metal button open. “Why, Keith! I never kne- _ hey! _” Lance yelped as a copy of Coran’s tights hit him across the face. 

“Get dressed already!”

His face feels like it’s on _ fire_. Keith clenches and unclenches his palms. They’re clammy. Over warm like the rest of him. 

His stomach feels like he’s doing barrel rolls for _ no reason _ and- Keith hears Lance draw in a deep breath and spins, launching the shirt.

He must hit him because there’s another shout, this time less surprised and more offended. He has all of a second to smirk before flash of red fabric fills his vision and everything goes muted and dark. 

Keith pulls a sharp breath in, surprised, and staggers back. He braces himself against the box as the scent floods his lungs. It fills his head in seconds, rushing through him and sending his thoughts spinning. 

Earthy and almost floral. A musk to it that comes from sun-sweat and work-sweat that he hasn’t thought of since leaving the desert behind.

He doesn’t need to see to know it’s Lance’s battered flannel. 

His fingers curl around the edges, ripped strings of fabric catching at his nails, as he considers hurling it back. 

It’s soft. 

He inhales again, letting the warmth fill him from the inside out.

“And then-”

Lance’s voice sounds far away, muffled by the shirt and made less real by the dim privacy of the fabric over his head. His fingers worried a frayed thread. It’s… peaceful. Almost- 

He needs to pull the shirt away from his face. It’s been too long. Too weird. Any second now Lance is going to notice and-

He reluctantly rips the fabric from his head, eyes narrowed conveniently against the too-bright castle lights. His upper lip curls in a preemptive snarl, low rumble already set to go in his throat so he can return whatever teasing vitriol leaves Lances tenfold.

“_What _-”

“You okay?”

The rumble dies. Concerned blue eyes peer down at him from across the room. 

Keith swallows against the moisture in his mouth. The remains of Lance’s pants, more like shorts now, are flopped in a sad pile on the floor between them. 

Lance stretches, leaning to the side in a long glide of muscle. The skin-tight black suit flows with him perfectly, which is just unfair given it’s clearly been fished out of some forgotten box. 

White teeth flash in the artificial lights, “Yeah, I found another undersuit!” 

Lance paused, leaning to the side to dig elbow deep in the box to his left. “I think there’s another set of armor in here too…”

Keith feels his head bob dumbly once, twice and then he shook it briskly out of the third nod. 

“How many sets _ are _ there?” 

Lance shrugged and tossed a set of white boots and knee-high shin guards to the ground at his feet. Keith struggled to keep his eyes above the neckline of the suit. 

“Who knows. Alteans are shapeshifters. They probably designed most of their clothes to account for that. I mean, remember Black's armor? That was last worn by _ Zarkon_. I don’t think he and Shiro shared a waist size.” 

There’s a pause as the pair of them mutually pictured the 9’ something Galran-Emperor attempting to shimmy and hop into a Shiro-sized undersuit. 

“Pffff!” 

They clapped their hands over their mouths like children, sputtering and muffling laughter into their palms. They calm down for a few seconds before catching each other’s eyes and spiraling right back into hysterics. 

There’s a moment where everything is light. Nothing pressing down on his shoulders but recycled air and the castles not-quite-accurate (artificial) gravity. 

Then the past tense lands and the joy, the ease, pops like a soap bubble. 

Because, according to Lance, Shiro’s _ gone_. A ghost in the machine. _ Dead_. 

(Out of reach. As touchable as the stars. As reachable as the celestial bodies his father told him his mother had returned to. The lie everyone shattered when they said the _ same thing _ at his father’s tiny funeral. The truth that broke back into more jagged pieces when his knife, _ her knife_, transformed between his bloody fingers.)

His thoughts must play across his face. This Lance must be better at reading him, better at peering in over the walls he’s raised up, because those icy eyes have thawed again, gone storm-soft and deep as his settled voice. He feels that tug in his gut again. All that manic energy grown into and channeled or tucked away for when Lance needs it most. A chambered shot, instead of a loose canon. He rips himself away, suffers through the sucker-tear that rips through his insides as he staggers away from those worried eyes and open hands. 

Keith doesn’t even know if this is _ their _ Lance and not some bigger, nicer, clone or something (since those were apparently _ a thing now _ ). Maybe _ he’s _ the one sent to lead them to their complacent doom. 

It wouldn’t, Keith thought as the hallway blurred into streaks around him, even be that hard. 

All it’d took was a smile. Soft eyes and that damn laugh, rich and strong and here he was, here they _ all were_, turning to puddy in those manicured hands. Finding him food and armor and anything he just _ asked _ for like- like-

He slams his fist into the wall of his barren room. Wishing he had a door to slam. 

(And if he tugs the tattered fabric of Lance’s shirt out of the impossible pockets of his mamoran suit, in the quiet and the dark of his empty room then that’s his business.) 

* * *

Keith tapped the hilt of his knife idly into his palm. He was pretty sure the ambassador across from him was asleep. It was hard to tell, given he wasn’t quite sure where the alien’s eyes were but-

“Keith will _ not _ be returning to the Blades of Marmora.”

_ Wait, what? _

Keith’s head snaps up, away from his circling thoughts. “Allura, what are you-”

“Princess, our alliance-”

She silences both their protests with naught but a raised hand.

“We need him in the Black Lion once more. Shiro is-” the princess hesitates for only a moment. “Until such a time that Shiro is no longer indisposed, it is critical that Keith remain within the Castle. He is the only other capable of piloting the Black Lion, our only hope for forming Voltron.”

...He shouldn’t feel pleased. Shiro is in danger. They all might be - 50:50 toss up on if it will have anything to do with what Lance predicted or if the stranger wearing their friend’s(?) name will turn out to be the danger himself. 

(He does, though. He’s _ needed_. He has a place here. He left and cut ties and he’s still allowed back- it’s a high he doesn’t quite know how to handle. Something almost like nausea flushing through him. Not quite sickly, not quite adrenalin.) 

There’s a niggle of worry, though. It has less to do with being welcomed back and more to do with being reassigned to Black. 

Assuming the Head of Voltron would even take him back there was one, prominent, problem-

“I think they’re going to _ notice_, Allura.” 

\- there was still the very real issue that most of the galaxy didn’t even know Keith was a paladin. Already the allied leaders around the table were exchanging curious glances among themselves; some out-right pointing or staring with multiple pairs of eyes. Keith had gotten odd looks when he’d entered but no one had made any motion to question him. He guessed it had to do with his sitting with the Blades, who drew nervous attention like a loadstone. But now… 

(He wasn’t _ sour _ about it. 

What did it matter that no one noticed he’d stopped flying Red? That they’d replaced him with Allura? That they’d even used his _ name _ for her show-prescribed scowling face and crossed arms?

It didn’t, obviously. _ Otherwise it never would have worked. _)

The princess waves his concerns away with the back of her hand. 

“It doesn’t matter. We need to show a strong front. Naxzela _ must _ be seen as a victory for the Alliance. Now, more than ever, it is critical that we not falter.”

Keith watched caught between his bitter thoughts and genuine respect as the princess’s words buttressed hope in everyone around her. 

“Which is why we’ve proposed to bring Prince Lotor-”

It plummeted as Allura started and fell further as she continued on. Listing noble causes and citing intelligence opportunities they really can’t afford to pass up.

Keith... isn’t sure how he feels about this. He isn’t exactly overcome with the warm and fuzzies for the galran heir. Lance shooting the guy three times on sight hadn’t helped any of their opinions either. Allura was putting up a good front of impartiality, but Keith knew she was keeping a pretty sharp eye on the Prince. 

Not to mention that they’d been _ fighting _ against him not too long ago. Keith casts a glance around the allied leaders gathered around the long table. They’d solidified their ability to rely on one another _ against _this guy. 

Working with him just felt… wrong.

Allura sat primly back in her chair at the head of the table. Hands still extended before her, as though inviting their agreement. 

Keith held her eyes for a moment, concerns on the tip of his tongue. He looked away, down the table at the gathered heads. Searched their eyes, all of them in some cases, for even a hint of nerves or disagreement. Found none. His fingers clench around the edge of the table, carefully not looking across at Kolivan’s dark visage. 

If he was going to be the Black Paladin, if he was going to lead Voltron, _ again_, then-

“_What_.”

Keith’s on his feet in seconds. Blade drawn and pointed at the uninvited guest at the door. 

Lance looms in the open doorway, borrowed armor changing the shape of him far more drastically than Keith expected. 

He looks-

(Broad. He _ fills _ the doorway. Shoulder guards and chest plate cutting a far more imposing silhouette than denim and flannel. He wears the paladin armor like a second skin. Moves with it, under it, in it, without thought. Like it was _ made _ for him and not scrounged from the depths of a long abandoned storeroom. Keith breath catches in his chest, instincts haywire and frazzled at the sight. He looks-)

\- enraged. 

Those blue marks burn with light, an eerie tick that Keith’s never witnessed in Allura or Coran, as Lance stalks to the end of the table.

Allura glowered back, seemingly unaware of how their allies had shoved their chairs back from the table, out of the line of fire. Keith tightened his grip and stayed on his feet. 

“Bring Prince Lotor into the Alliance. With his information and aid we-”

“-what aid is the banished prince,” Keith half expected Lance to spit after the title, “going to bring, Allura?” He doesn’t let her answer. “Where was his ‘aid’ before Naxzela? Where was his _ aid _ for Pugia?! He’s murdered _ thousands_, Allura! Even the Galra refuse to follow him!” 

Lance swept a broad hand out to the side, the gesture forceful enough to ruffle the hair and clothes of the unfortunate allies on his left. He continued on, either not noticing or caring as the aliens in question flinched back, continuing on as quick as Keith remembered, “And speaking of, where’s his little team? Huh?” 

Keith kept his blade ready but… He’d read the Blade’s reports. Granted that was mostly in anticipation of finally _ fighting _ one of them. Axca, Ezor, Narti and Zethrid; Lotor’s so called ‘generals’. All highly specialized combatants, all nightmares in a fight, and all the more of a pain to find information about in the first place. They had nasty habit of not leaving survivors around to tell tales. More than that, though, they were rumored to be _ ridiculously _ loyal. The only trait, Keith grimaced to himself, that might compete with their infamous sadism. 

So if the prince was here, alone, then where were the illustrious four-some?

It seemed no one had an answer. (Though Keith was sure Lance’s abrupt arrival had generated a lot more questions.)

The silence lingered, not one soul willing to step between the two (_alteans_, his mind stuttered over the revelation again) glowering at each other from opposite ends of the long table. 

“And what does he get in return?” Lance demanded. “An army? An empire? You’re going to hand _ Zarkon’s son _ access to the greatest resistance force ever mustered in ten thousand years - Why? Because you think he’s _ altean_?” The venom in Lance’s voice stung and he hadn’t even been the intended target. “Have you even thought about how he’s still _ here _?!” 

Lance’s voice cracks when he gets excited. It wasn’t a fact Keith ever thought he’d learn, but it became a fact of his life within hours of meeting the other. Anger, happiness, sadness, fear - they all cracked down the middle with Lance. Broke open and oozed out in awkward octaves and gangly limbs. Just categorically _ Lance_. 

That too, is gone. Stolen away by time or something worse. Something more sinister, more fitting the man that fills doorways, armor, rooms. That shoots princes. Raises every hair on Keith’s body-

This Lance’s voice lowers in rage, growing almost hoarse. He leans forward, as though sharing a secret, each word a piece of gravel falling from his lips.

“You wanna know how he’s still alive, Allura? How he’s still around? He didn’t end up in a nice cryo-”

Her clenched hands send every object on the table, silverware, weapons, notes, the lot, an inch skyward as they impact the surface. They bounce across the table, scattering over the surface in a mess.

“That is _ enough _! You-”

“He’s been _ draining their quintessence! _”

The meaning of whatever Lance is trying to tell them (draining _ who’s _ quintessence? What does that even mean? Isn’t quintessence just energy? Why does Lance make it sound like something more?) is lost in what happens next. 

The table shudders and collapses under Allura’s hands, objects flying in every direction as the ambassadors, warriors, and amassed royalty scream in shock and dive behind their chairs for cover. 

There’s a simultaneous crack of light, bright enough to break the world around it. 

Keith shakes his head, blinking spots out of his vision as he cuts through the errant padd hurtling towards his face. By the time he lowers his arm it’s too late. 

Allura’s entire hand, from fingertips to wrist, is glowing a violent pink. The energy weighs down the air around her in its might and Keith’s breath catches as he follows that clenched fist. All that control, that tightly leashed power, pointed unerringly at the man across the table. 

Lance doesn’t flinch. Doesn’t move a centimeter, even as the dust settles against the white matte of his armor. He wouldn’t, Keith realizes. He doesn’t have to. 

The red bayard glows, hot, in Lance’s outstretched hand. 

It crackles erratically in his grip, surges of crimson energy licking up his arms as though in response to Allura’s raised power. 

Dread pools in Keith’s stomach. The red bayard is unchanged, still just a simple handle, but the impossible way in which it appeared in Lance’s grasp - the implied threat… 

Lance must see it too because his fingers flex once, jaw set and eyes serious, before he turns and leaves the way he came.

The table stays where it is.

(Keith wouldn’t be shocked to discover that Allura’d shoved the strut supporting the table straight through to the lower deck. He eyes what’s left of it carefully as the room begins to froth with raised voices. The floor is cracked. ...Coran was going to have whatever the altean equivalent of _ kittens _ was.)

* * *

They let Lotor out mere varga later. 

The prince tumbles forward, landing almost delicately in Allura’s arms. 

Keith strides out before they finish staring into each other's eyes, calculating and tooth-grindingly hopeful beneath it all. 

Keith can’t quite put his finger on it but _ something _ about the Prince sets his teeth on edge.

He does his best to manage, he’s not a _ child_, but something must show through because Hunk makes a few cracks at ‘galra-Keith’ feeling territorial over the castle, and, well, maybe that _is_ it. (He’s seen more than fists fly during his extended time with the Blades over certain spaces and saved seats). How would he know? It’s not like anyone’s around to _ tell _him. 

Part of it, though, is definitely the awkward, and _ inescapable_, conversations. 

Keith knew he wasn’t exactly the most verbose of the group but even he was capable of more than Lotor’s carefully stilted phrases. 

_ “A bygone era of peace” _ ? Come _ on_. Who talked like that?

And while Hunk certainly succeeded at draining the tension from the room, he opened the floodgates on Lotor repeatedly bringing up his and Keith’s “mutual heritage”. Keith grimaced as he recalled the way Lotor’s eyes had sharpened and sized him up. Like he was weighing if Keith was real enough to belong in his world or not and the verdict wasn’t quite out yet.

Then the looming started, lingering around meals and, honestly, it’s far worse than Keith’s own awkward attempts at bonding with his fellow Blade members. 

He ducks back out of the alcove again, not willing to end up in yet another conversation about “overcoming the weight” of their “glorious heritage”.  
(...As though being part galra was all there was to Keith. That his race was the total of his parts and not his actions. That every fear he had before finding the blade was true and real and ready to happen at _any moment._) 

Quietly, in the privacy of his own mind, Keith admits that it might, _ might_, have worked had it not been for one final thing.

There was just something… _ wrong _ about Lotor. 

A sense that buzzed under Keith’s skin like a hornet’s nest whenever the prince drew near. It twisted his stomach and left his knuckles aching.

Just standing near the guy made him nauseous.

was to Keith. 

Quietly, in the privacy of his own mind, Keith admits that it might,  _ might _ , have worked had it not been for one final thing.

There was something  _ wrong _ about Lotor.  Just standing near the guy made him nauseous.

(He tells himself it has nothing to do with Lance’s opinion of the Prince. 

He hasn’t seen Lance since they let Lotor out anyway. He tries not to feel too disappointed.)

* * *

Hunk catches him stumbling out of the training room, almost literally. 

Training with the Blades was different. Keith didn’t quite remember the castle’s programs being that… sadistic, when he’d been here last. Just one more change, he supposed. 

He shakes his head, a little groggy if he’s being honest, and tries to stop the world from spinning as Hunk latches onto his arm and tugs him down the hallway.

They make three turns before Keith realizes Hunk’s not herding him into the medbay. 

“Hunk?”

“Just about here-”

The door opened, there were so many doors in the castle, hundreds of rooms, how the hell did anyone keep them all straight? But this one was vaguely familiar, even before the lights clicked on.

This was… that was-

Keith stared up at the Red armor. Perfectly clean, perfectly accessible, and perfectly, impossibly, still set to his size. 

The yellow paladin’s large hand closer over his shoulder, as warm and solid as the boy himself. 

“Of course we kept it, dude. We were just waiting for you to come back home.” 

There’s something in his throat, catching at him painfully as he tries to swallow back the feeling building in his chest. He doesn’t - he doesn’t know what to do with this. This obvious sign of - of the team’s affection. Of their caring. That they _ remembered _ \- that they were waiting on _ him_. That they expected, wanted, him to come back. _ To come _ ** _home_**. 

Luckily, he didn’t have to do anything. Hunk trembled in place once and then lurched forward, scooping the smaller paladin into a hug.

“G’s messing with your head again?” Keith muttered quietly into Hunk’s shoulder. 

The Yellow Paladin just squeezed him tighter for a second. “Sure, man. That works.”

The embrace, warm and full-bodied and _ there_, lasts for another precious second longer before Hunk pulls back.

“There’s also - here.”

Oh. 

Keith took the jacket, had it always been this small?, gently. He traced the uneven stitching along the left sleeve, startling gently as Hunk kept talking. “Turns out Lance had it this whole time… Pidge and I found it while we were going through his room!”

Keith took a brief moment to mourn for their-Lance’s privacy. He wasn’t sure _ anyone _ should be subjected to the joint snooping prowess of Hunk-and-Pidge, certainly not when they couldn’t fight back. 

He clutched the jacket a little closer to his chest, taking a subtle sniff of the fabric. 

_ Yep. That’s Lance. _

“Yeah, I know.” 

He looks up into Hunk’s furrowed brow. “Keith… _ How _ did you know that?” 

"It..."_ Smells like him. _"...seems obvious."

A thoughtful look crossed the taller boy’s face. “I guess… I think he missed you, man. Not that he said anything about it, but he was _ weird _after you left. And the Voltron Show…” The Yellow Paladin trailed off with an awkward laugh. “He was different when you were in Black. Better, you know? I think… he hasn’t been the same since.” Hunk trailed off, fiddling nervously with the callouses along his fingers. 

“Shiro-” an odd look crossed Hunk’s face, one Keith was sure mirrored his own. “-not Shiro, I guess, he… well.” For the first time, Hunk looked away. “Maybe it _ does _ make sense, that he’s not Shiro. He was…” Domineering. Controlling. Almost harsh, with Lance more than any of them. Lance, who’d tried to step up as Voltron’s right arm. Who had succeeded in doing so with Keith at the helm but who had, apparently, fallen back to immature, goofy, distracted pieces in his wake. 

It wasn’t, Hunk tried to caveat, anything major. Not anything _ serious_, not really. Just that Shiro’d been more stressed, easier to upset, had less time for them. 

They were running an Alliance now, it was a serious deal. And Lance’s opinions were, well. It was _ Lance_.

Keith stood still, sure without knowing that this wasn’t something he was supposed to be hearing. That this wasn’t something Lance wanted shared, wanted _ known_. 

“None of it was that big a deal. I mean…” Hunk forces a short laugh through his throat. “Nothing _ evil_. Just fewer words of praise. Less pep talks…. A little yelling.” He says this last bit quickly, as though it would someone escape Keith’s notice. 

Keith’s head snaps up. “Yelling?” 

It doesn’t, of course. Because Shiro didn’t yell. The sun rose in the east and set in the west and Shiro didn’t raise his voice. He hadn’t even yelled when Keith stole his _ car_. Slav was a weird exception, and, frankly, Keith still wasn’t sure that it had anything to do with the physicist-platypus- _ thing _ and more to do with being in a galra prison. 

“I mean, it was just,” Hunk floundered for a few moments, “He was just being _ Lance_, you know?” 

Keith’s fingers pressed harsh creases into the leather of his jacket. 

‘Just Lance’. Just the goofball. Just the distraction. Just the _ spare _ \- wasn’t that what Lance had said, all those weeks ago when they’d finally found Shiro? 

Keith wondered for a moment as he searched Hunk’s face, at the pair’s friendship. 

They’d seemed so close, at the start. But… when was the last time he’d seen the two of them together on the ship? When was the last time he’d heard Hunk talk about doing something with Lance? They’d been friends at the Garrison… hadn’t they? Why, then, had Lance sought _ him, _ of all people, out? 

Why hadn’t he confided in his friend?

(And if he had… why hadn’t Hunk _ stopped him _ ? Why did he come to Keith in the first place? Why did one of them always have to leave for the other to move forward? Only this time, neither of them had. They’d backslid, hard. And now Lance was _ gone _ and this stranger was in his place and-)

Hunk seemed oblivious to Keith’s frantic mental leaps. 

“But... it was sorta weird, to hear Shiro contradict Lance during firefights. We all sort of got used to hearing him give out advice, you know?”

He hadn’t. But he was damn well going to find out.

* * *

Meals were a trying time. 

Not only was Shiro’s absence a sore thumb but now there was the added awkward of Lotor lingering over every bite. At least it wasn’t goo. Between the Alliance and Lotor’s own, secretive, connections the goo’d been moved off the menu. 

Be it the suffocating atmosphere, the elephants in the room, or the sheer desire to avoid one another until it was absolutely necessary, hardly anyone ate at the same time. They passed like ships in the night. If ships lurked awkwardly around corners and sped ate or sometimes flat out ran from rooms or dove behind countertops. Still, somethings had to be eaten hot, or so claimed Hunk who was now by far the most social of the paladins, and the occasional awkward group meal became unavoidable.

Tonight was one such occasion. Keith wasn't even sure what Hunk had created this time, he was little suspicious after the supposedly galran thing they'd had to resubdue halfway through the meal aright, but the Yellow Paladin hadn't stopped paging him until he'd finally agreed to show up. They all trickle in from one thing or another… but it’s not until Hunk shows up, last and alone with what looks like a sever-gallon soup pot, that Keith realizes who’s _ still _ missing.

“Where’s Lance?”

There’s a delicate pause, even Lotor turns away from Allura and their research to scan the room as Hunk puts the pot down with a _thunk_ and stares at Keith with an equally confused expectation from his seat.

“...Wasn’t he with you?” 

Keith looks up, certain he'd said no such thing. "No? I haven't seen him in days..." There’s a moment as they all look to one another, blank faces spreading around the table. 

The gac drops. 

Keith bolts out of the dining hall in a rush of noise and raised voices.

He’s halfway to the Bay, the shoot actually more than half the castle away from the dining hall, when Hunk’s voice reverberates down the main comm line; the speakers blasting his voice through the castle. 

There’s no response. 

Keith hadn’t expected one but then, it was only a matter of time. 

_ So a trick, then. A clone or a decoy or- or- _

The hangar doors open wide. He barely skids through the frame in time to see the tail of the Red Lion. 

_\- or_ **not**_._

Keith raises his arms before his face, feet braced against the sudden air current pressing him backward, hair blasted back by the breeze generated by the Red Lion tearing out of the Castle of Lions. 

...Did that even_ prove _ anything? Shiro, _ not-Shiro, apparently, if they were believing maybe-Lance _, was capable of flying Black. 

Were the Lions so easily fooled?

He’s charging before the thought even fully forms, rushing towards Black’s massive paws. 

Red may be the fastest lion, but Black was the Head for a _ reason _. 

If anyone could wrangle Red back into line it would be Black.

(He did his best to forget how true to the opposite his own experience with that had been - how it was (_ wasn’t _ ) _ Red _ who’d managed _ Black _ his entire span in the cockpit). 

They don’t so much as twitch. 

“Black!”

Nothing.

He feels his heart sink as Hunk’s voice turns panicked. 

Black is unresponsive. As quiet and immovable as they’d been after Shiro had fist vanished. 

He slams his fist against Black’s unforgiving bulk with a shout. Over and over until he can feel bruises leak under his skin and his breaths heave between his teeth and tender ribs. 

_ Why did you even take me? _

It’d been bothering him for months. Why had it been  _ him _ ? 

He wasn’t - he could fly, sure, but he could do that better in Red.  _ Did _ better in Red, Keith thought sourly as the other’s voices joined Hunk’s on the comm. 

He let the noise wash over him. What was the point?

Why take him as  _ Leader _ ? What had Black seen in him? 

With Allura right there… He wasn’t a prince. Wasn’t a natural leader, wasn’t a natural anything. A fighter, maybe. But not a soldier. Not like Kolivan, or even Allura, wanted him to be. 

( _ Maybe-Lance  _ was long gone by now. They didn’t have a ship capable of catching up with Red. Not with the Black Lion out of the picture. There was a part of him that wanted to rush for a shuttle anyway just to  _ do _ something but… what was the point?)

He tucked his legs up, settling into the hollow shadow of Black’s forepaw. ...The Blade hadn’t been all that bad. 

Keith had honestly expected the worst. Because, well, not to put too fine a point on it, but the Blades were all  _ Galra _ . 

It hadn’t been, though. Sure, they were more organized than Voltron and more militant than the Garrison… but they had to be. 

Earth was in a time of peace post the Great War. There hadn’t been an active non-Allianced military in decades. 

The Blades didn’t have that luxury. Had never known it existed to begin with. Peace was a pipe dream, an unfathomable tomorrow that they still, somehow, were willing to bet everything towards. There wasn’t a Blade alive who  _ hadn’t _ been born into war. And still - it really wasn't all bad. 

There were the Clans, the family lineages, histories, hidden bits of art and passed on fables and stories. Holograms of children and loved ones were tucked around every rest-quarter. Squads bartered and traded chores and tasks the same as the foster and blood children in the homes Keith had passed through before Shiro. 

It really wasn’t all  _ that _ different from what he knew.

Which made it all the worse.

It was just one more place he didn’t belong. 

Keith didn’t know the stories. Didn’t have any holograms. Didn’t know the schedules well enough to structure a trade and couldn’t prove his worth soon enough to make one even once he did. 

You can’t order that kind of acceptance. 

Kolivan assigned him a bunk and a training rotation and a sparring partner and nothing, not one thing, ever slid even slightly out of place.

His bunk was never messed with. Never riddled with claw marks or scratched notes or hidden ration bars. His training rotation greeted and introduced themselves plainly the first day and cordially walked him through the exercise sets. His sparring partner arrived exactly on the varga, beat him into the ground with minimal chatter and then left the tick the time-block ended. 

It was nothing and  _ exactly _ like Earth. 

He was perfectly, totally, surrounded and absolutely alone.

There were no in-jokes he knew the core of or favorites he could stock-pile or steal away in the mess hall. No one ever dragged him into stupid activities or called out dares or bets in the middle of practice. 

No Lance.

His hands throb. They’ll bruise, he knows. The blades don't have healing pods. They’re lost altean tech, apparently. They don’t believe in icing either. 

Black is silent. Grave and hollow and nothing like the searing flash he remembers from Red. Rage and passion and drumming heartbeat. 

He’d expected… he hadn’t known what he expected, when he’d moved to Black. When Allura had moved to Blue and Red had  _ called _ to Lance. Lance in Red was just unexpected… and somehow  _ right _ . His right hand, guiding without tipping into controlling. Helping him steer the team. Reaching out  _ first _ this time, helping them find their way and keeping everyone together even under the most dire of circumstances. Then... this Lance. Sad eyes, strong hands. Determined and indomitable and  _ gone _ . Just like everyone else who'd ever taken a chance on him. Just like  Krolia - his  _ mother,  _ apparently. And Kolivan  _ knew _ . Knew and nearly killed him anyway. Tested him to near destruction.  For what? The hell of it? What was the  _ fucking point _ ? 

Hour or minutes later the rest of the team burst through the doors. His hands are bruised.

* * *

A varga passes. 

Then a quintet.

Then a full movement. 

There’s no sign of lance 

His hands bruise, but he’s caught, confused and a little lost, coming out of the hangar hours, seconds, ages, later by Coran. 

The older altean doesn’t say a word. He just rubs a gel that stings and then cools to near numbing over his bloody and busted knuckles before wrapping Keith’s hands in some sort of gauze in place of his usual gloves. 

(Later, days later, Keith wonders at how Coran knew he was still in there. Wonders why the altean had been so close to the hangar at all. He catches the older man sliding silently through the halls of the castle, watching Lotor and Allura with narrowed eyes and piles of undelivered, unrequested, reference materials in his arms - and doesn’t ask.)

He tries once, just the once, to pull up the pod they’ve put Shiro in. 

An alarm chimes out, so high pitched and so annoying that it must have come from something Lance brought with him from Earth and somehow convinced Pidge to use. A string of altean text rolls across the screen so quickly Keith’s translator can’t keep up. It vanishes with a muted flash and the floor refuses to shift. Stupid of him to think they wouldn’t leave a lock. 

A day, a week, two, a month goes by.

They move the castle.

* * *

The Alliance is uncomfortable, but Lotor’s information has so far proved reliable. 

The Blades are reporting a success increase of nearly 85%, a statistic so unbelievable it seems to be making the rebel galra even more paranoid instead of less.

This is fantastic news, given that they’re down one lion of Voltron and with it the ability to, you know, live up to the Voltron part of their Voltron Alliance. 

(Privately, Keith doesn’t think it particularly fucking matters. Black is still unresponsive.) 

Allura has dug out hundreds of files from the hitherto unseen library in the castle. Keith has come across her and Lotor a time too many sitting side by side pouring over the altean texts in the lounge and dining hall. Pidge was fit enough to scream the first time she found them scrolling through the tomes, offended beyond measure that there was a stockpile of data being kept from her. 

Things had, somehow, settled since Lance departed. 

A routine of re-training, of trying to re-bond with the Black Lion and refamiliarizing himself with the castle and its inhabitants. 

And, apparently, the odd mission on Lotor’s behalf. Keith sighed and looked back over the odd set of boxes and fauna he and Hunk had been tasked with collecting into Yellow’s large hull. 

“This better be one heck of a science project.”

Hunk snorts, not quite a laugh but definitely amused. “Sorry, sorry. It’s just, for a moment there you sounded like-” His voice cuts off. 

Keith does his best to smile reassuringly. He knows that isn’t saying much and Hunk’s wince confirms it. 

It’s… strange. The castle feels larger without Lance. _ Their _ Lance, that is. 

Emptier and colder and for all that Keith couldn’t name one thing Lance did for the team on his own, it seems like everyone is somehow feeling his absence. 

There’s a hundred little things that just feel _ wrong_. (It feels like the time Adam moved everything in the apartment half an inch to the left.) 

“...Let’s just get back to the castle.”

It’s easier to pretend.

(He learned that lesson a long time ago.)

Unloading takes less time. 

Yellow is a forgiving Lion, or at least less prideful than Red or Black, and lays down readily to ease access into the secondary hull. Pidge’s reprogrammed sentry bots (and okay, look, he was _ sorry _ but if she’d wanted that first one to keep it’s arms she shouldn’t have had it tap him on the shoulder unexpectedly.) clump smoothly up and down the ramps as they go about the monotonous and thankless task of carrying out Hunk and Keith’s hard work.

He leaves the Yellow Paladin in the hangar bay and heads to the bridge for the now mandatory sit-rep. 

A large diagram of _ something _ closes down just after the door opens. Lotor smiles as Allura fiddles with the controls. Keith’s eyes narrow even as he crosses the threshold and closes the distance between them. Another dull report and then-

The bridge screen crackles once, a jolt of light zipping across it before the main screen opens.

“Kinda rude to move without leaving a forwarding address!”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> AN:  
Allura didn’t really mean to break the table… but she’s strong and very upset and more than a little compromised on multiple fronts. She has a lot going on and Keith isn’t the world’s most compassionate, or reliable, narrator.  
I’ve come to the conclusion that there isn’t any crossover in the FMA and Voltron fanbase, because the quintessence used by the Galra (especially Lotor’s special “refined” quintessence) is literally just not-red Philosopher Stone material. Lotor is effectively a Homunculus a la FMA... and Keith's quintessence sensitivity means he can just about hear the screams of the damned powering Lotor's hyperextended life.  
Anyway, expect a short fic about my variant on Post-Canon Lance regarding this topic as well as the creation of the Lions in Strange Collection soon, because it’s been bothering me since the show ended. Farmer my ass. 
> 
> UnPopOp**I’m not sold on the idea that Hunk and Lance were ever friends. They were roommates - so close acquaintances? Maybe? But friends? Voltron did a lot of telling - but they don’t really show those two being friends. Compare Hunk and Pidge’s relationship. That’s what friendship looks like. Hunk and Lance? Not so much.


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> WORKING TITLE - NAME THAT SONG: HEY NAH, HEY NAH~

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi everyone!  
Like the rest of this fic this chapter will likely undergo massive edits but, for now, please enjoy the conclusion(?) of this tale!

“Kinda rude to move without leaving a forwarding address!”

Lotor flinches, ever so slightly, as Lance’s voice blares over the Castle’s comms. 

A smug sort of satisfaction wells in Keith’s chest. The guy’s been annoying at best and frankly, what did Pidge call it, ‘_ bad-touch _’ at worst. 

Really, trying to bond with him over their half-galran heritage was just _ urgh. _ To say nothing of the weird mutually calculating _ whatever _ he and Allura have been doing the past few weeks.

Keith leans forward in his seat as a video feed opens across the bridge, vaguely noting that Pidge and Hunk skid through the door a few seconds later.

A yellow blurr takes up the entirety of the video. They all stare in confusion. 

“Is it working?” An accented voice querries. It’s high, female, and not at all expected.

“Romelle, hey, you’ve gotta, yeah- there you go.”

After a moment the blonde, whoever they are, lean back a bit. 

She’s young, with a serious slant to her brow and he hears Allura’s breath catch in her throat. There’s a pair of altean markings just under the blonde’s cheeks, the angular swoops as unmistakable as the pointed ears sticking up next to her two long ponytails. There’s a quiet amount of noise as the girl bounds across the screen, hair whipping around the absent paladin in the pilot seat as she begins ranting or raving or whatever it is that’s driving her to such extremely effusive gestures.

There’s a significance to her presence, one beyond the obvious appearance of a new altean out of _ nowhere _ in the Red Lion post Lance’s joy ride. He knows that on some level.

It's just that nothing is really registering for Keith, because there’s a galran woman standing next to Red’s chair.

She’s is not nearly as tall as most galra he’s met. She’s lacking the lizard or cat like appendages he’s grown used to seeing on scattered Blades. There’s not a scale or tuft of fur or horn in sight. 

He knows he’s staring. 

Something echoes inside of him, hollow and far away. 

If it weren’t for the vibrant pink and purple of her hair or the lilac tinge to her skin, she could almost pass for human. 

Almost.

She’s staring right back, purple-on-yellow eyes roving over him in sweeps through the screen. 

There’s nothing, nothing at all, he can see to suggest what he’s thinking. 

Nothing to bolster the assumption, the intuition, he can almost feel clawing its way out of his chest.

Nothing but the _ timing _ , nothing but the incredible odds of a _ grown galra _ specifically returning with a runaway, grown Lance.

_ \- She’s his _ ** _mother_ ** _ you - _

Something grabs hold of his spine. Shakes him from the inside out. 

( Is this…?

Is she...? )

“**Lotor**.”

His eyes snap away, attention broken by the venom drenching the altean girl’s voice. 

If Lotor had twitched at Lance’s voice, he goes down right squirrely at the sight of the blonde altean. 

The girl presses far too close to the camera again, as though she could reach through the video and shake the prince. Lance squawks somewhere in the background. 

It fades into noise. Every hair on Keith’s neck raises as that not-quite-english accent cuts across his nerves,

“...Lotor?”

* * *

There’s a half second where Keith thinks that Lotor is going to be able to talk his way out of whatever this is. The blank mask that slipped over his face at the sight of the blonde altean parts like flower petals, an appropriately awed look blooming across his face. He turns to the princess, reaches out to meet her half way. 

“Alteans… Allura, do you know what this means?”

Allura does not reach back. 

Keith takes a pointed step away, hand falling to the hilt of his blade. Purple eyes flicker towards him for half a heartbeat and then back. 

“Your people,” Lotor pauses, ducks his head as though ashamed for a moment before raising his proud neck high, strong jaw set in determination. Two sharp cuts of light glow under the prince’s eyes, a more sinister looking variant of what Keith assumes are altean markings. “-_ our _people, are still out there!” 

There’s a delicate pause. Allura’s eyes narrow ever so slightly, something flashing too quickly to name across their pink hues. 

There’s a quiet intake of breath, the shocked surprise Keith thinks Lotor was aiming for with his sudden reveal, from behind him. A muttered, “Oh, boy.”, the only sound in the room beyond the clatter on the still open comm line behind them. 

Keith glances towards the screen for a second. The galran woman and the altean are gone. Only Lance remains. His jaw is set, eyes two shards of ice as he meets Keith’s gaze. 

“-we can _ find _them and-”

Those eyes flicker to the side, Lance’s head tilting slightly with them. 

Keith checks the room again. No one is looking. He glances back at Lance and nods, not quite sure what the other is hinting at but the warmth that surges through his chest at the other’s crooked grin is more than worth the lingering confusion.

“-maybe even the secrets of Oriande!” 

Allura glides forward, steps poised and silent. Lotor reaches up, one large hand open and soft, to drag a knuckle down her cheek. Allura places one hand softly on his chest, eyes wide and wondering at she stares up at him. 

There’s a flash of pink, sharp and bright. Keith blinks, hair settling from the sudden breeze. Lotor is across the room. 

The prince crashes, hard, and rolls to a halt - half skirt tangling in his legs as he goes. 

Keith has all of a second to register that before another flash of light has him ducking to the side, a blue whip cracking into the floor past his face not a heartbeat later. He hears more than sees Hunk and Pidge dive for cover with him. There’s a scream of rage, deep enough that it honestly could have come from either of the silver-haired warriors in the room, and then the whole bridge erupts into madness. 

Allura’s whip is _ everywhere _, bayard a barely trackable blur as Lotor dodges, parries, and leaps his way around the gleaming blue energy, feet thudding into the glass at a sprint for a gravity-defying escape even as the paladins are forced back behind the room’s chairs for momentary cover. 

Keith eyes Hunk’s inactive bayard, a surge of irritation rising within him as the Yellow Paladin doesn’t even _ try _ to take the heat off Allura - and then the other half of his brain wakes up and notes that loose machine gun fire and a room that _ controls the ship _ and has a _ full clear view-screen _ to the _ void of space _ is a terrible combination. 

As if to confirm his sudden intuition, Allura’s bayard flicks off the can’t-be-glass with an ominous sounding _ whack! _

For a second, everything's falls still as all eyes flicker over the looming blackness, searching for cracks. Then the Prince’s head tilts. Keith sucks in a breath to warn Allura - and Lotor goes flying through the air, again, as he misjudges the speed at which Allura can, apparently, redirect her energy whip. 

Keith catches a flash of orange out of the corner of his eye and turns in time to see Coran slip through the door. His brow furrows. Why would Coran leave during a time like _ this _-

A ring of metal against metal hauls Keith right out of his head. His sword is in his hand before he even puts together what’s in front of him. 

Allura grunts with effort, a thin sword, almost a rapier, all that stands between her neck and Lotor’s curved blade. The prince presses against her guard one-handed, forcing Allura to brace her shaking blade with her free hand. 

Lotor leans into her space as their swords shriek against one another, “Why can’t you understand! All I’ve done I’ve done for-”

“Yourself!” The princess cuts him off. The scrape of metal-against-metal screeched, high and dangerous as Allura shifted her weight to the side, forcing Lotor’s momentum and pressure away to her left as she stepped quickly to the right. “They were people, Lotor! _ Our _ people! _ How _ could you _ use _ them-”

A series of clashes rang through the air, a flurry of swift, ludicrously strong, blows flickering sparks between the dueling alteans. Their blades barely visible blurs maring the small space between them. Keith growls under his breath and keeps circling, searching for openings that won’t cost Allura her focus. Lotor is pressing her back, pushing her into more and more complicated ripostes to catch his blade.

“To create a better future! Sacrifices must be _ made _ for progress, Allura! I needed something to keep the Galra-”

A line of purple cut across Lotor’s cheek, just under his eye. The prince staggers backwards, shocked by the sudden ferocity.

“No! There is _ no excuse _ -” Allura grunts with effort as the prince surges forward, the renewed clash of their blades less punctuation and more a conversation all itself as they dueled once more around the main console. Keith sees the end of the duel even as Allura darts in for another glancing blow. The two might be equal in strength but the prince was clearly the more practiced swordsman. The marks under Lotor’s cheeks begin to glow, the left one cut through with an eerie color beneath the still drying blood. They lock swords again, Allura nearly at the controls on the high ground and - _ there! _

Keith curses and surges forward, blade extending. He lines up his blade with Lotor’s back and swears as a _ second sword _ catches his own. Keith gets a good look at those cuts of color under Lotor’s eye as they shine sharply before Keith’s feet leave the floor. 

The world spins as he flips to stick the landing and then twists again as a wet gasp echoes through the air. He looks up in time to see a spill of white hair tumble towards the floor. _ Allura! _

He doesn’t make it two steps. A hand drags Keith’s head back by his hair, sword arm wrenched forward, finger-bones grinding together beneath Lotor’s inhuman hand until his blade is prised from his grip.

“Not one move.” 

There’s a ring of metal, close, way too close, and Keith’s throat bobs shallowly at the ice cold press of Lotor’s blade and his own sting his throat. 

Hunk and Pidge freeze, each halfway to a downed paladin. Pidge’s hand slowly closes around the hilt of her bayard. Keith’s breath catches as he feels a trickle of blood slide down his skin.

“Not one more or-”

There’s no noise. Nothing so unprofessional as a scream or a shout or a growl. 

There’s just the cold metal of Lotor’s blade under his neck one second, and a blur of purple and silver the next. 

Keith’s wrist _ aches _ , but the pain, _ sprain - possibly dislocated _ , is secondary, is _ nothing _ compared to the sight in front of him. 

“_ Who _ are-” the prince grunts, wind knocked from him as the woman, the galra from the call, shoves him backwards with a boot to his chest. She doesn’t give him room to recover, diving back in not a tick later. Keith’s blade is in her hands, extended and still-glowing from its renewed transformation. It _ sings _ through the air, beating back Lotor’s blades with reckless-looking abandon. The three of them stare, watching dumbly as the galra woman duels Lotor back across the bridge. Pidge and Hunk exchange a look before rushing to Allura’s side, bayards deactivated once again as they skirt the edges of the fight. 

She’s keeping his attention, he realizes, dancing Lotor away and around his and Allura’s positions. 

She bears down on Lotor, their blades pressing with enough force to throw sparks before the prince sets his feet and shoves her several feet back. Krolia is quick, though, or at least experienced enough to anticipate Lotor’s following charge. She ducks the first dual swipe and slides around the following combination of blows until she’s fully back on her feet and parrying again. 

It’s… the exact opposite problem Allura had. Krolia is weaving around or parrying Lotor’s blows like the galran prince is standing still. Sparks fly as she slices around his guard over and over again - rebuffed each time with a purple spark as the blade glances off that weird armor. 

But Keith can see her arms strain each time she holds a parry for too long or blocks with too much of the blade. 

Lotor is stronger. 

Those twisted altean marks flash back into sight and glow brighter. 

A _ lot _ stronger. 

One curved blade comes up and this time, this time the blow forces Krolia’s parry wide. It nearly spins her around with the force of the strike, a displaced wash of air blowing her hair back and her eyes wide.

The second blade descends.

Keith feels his heart stop. 

“_ Mom! _”

The

blade

s w i n g s 

d o w n . . . 

No one expects the tree branch.

Lotor’s eyes roll back before he crumples to the ground in a heap. The blonde altean skitters backward, leaves fluttering to the ground around her. She toes closer to the prince for a second before spinning around and hauling Krolia to her feet, clutching nervously at the older woman’s hand. Krolia blinks, surprised, before gently prying her hand out of the blonde’s shaking death grip. 

Keith blinks, suddenly realizing the bridge is a great deal more crowded.

“Romelle, I thought we agreed you’d leave that on the base!” 

Keith’s head cracks around, startled but somehow not surprised to find Lance nearly at his elbow.

“It’s symbolic.” The blonde protests, cradling the cracked branch the way others might hold new jewelry or particularly cute children. 

“It’s unsanitary is what it is.” Lance eyes the bough with palpable distaste as he strides across the bridge. “Don’t drag that thing all over the castle,” He pauses taking in Lotor’s sprawled, likely concussed, form before moving on with a shake of his head. “You don’t know where it’s been.” 

He drops into a crouch almost out of sight, just his head and shoulders visible over the curve of the control dias. “Hey, Allura. Sorry we’re late.” 

Keith stumbles after him, remembering the flash of a sword stroke before Lotor launched him through the air. 

His heart is going a mile a minute. Brain still scrambling the two events together. He can’t - can’t quite look over where his- where- where the alteans and Krolia are. (...He can’t even think it right now. Can’t focus on that, not when there’s more to do. If he tries to think right now he knows he’ll do something he’ll regret. He always has, when he gets like this. So he doesn’t. He just moves forward. Stumbles over to the cluster of paladins and drops to his knees in his place within the circle they’ve made around Allura.) 

Allura is fine. A little bloody but- Keith blinks. White locks spill past Allura’s pointed ears and… stop. He stares for a moment too long, long enough for the princess to reach up and startle as her fingers _ don’t _ touch anything. Keith breaks eye contact, looking to the side as Pidge makes commiserating noises. A huge swath of white spreads across the floor around Allura’s still seated position and _ oh _, that’s what had happened.

Keith cocks a grin at Allura’s watery smile. “Glad he missed.” 

“Well, yes, mostly.” She toys with the rough ends of her hair, voice as shaky as his.

“Yeah thats,” Lance pauses and something must have changed because he looks right at her without flinching or being in some sort of rage. “We can fix that.” 

It’s such a _ Lance _ comment that a laugh bursts out of Keith.

Purple megalomaniac-redux was on the ground; Allura had nearly been decapitated; Keith’s throat had almost been slit; who knew how many strangers were somehow on the ship, and here Lance was, worrying over evening out Allura’s hair of all things. 

It's contagious, each of them breaking down laughing one after another until for a good few minutes they’re all just standing there, in various states, gasping between helpless giggles. 

It’s- it’s not the strongest showing of Voltron but honestly, Keith is just glad they’re all still standing. That they’re all _ here _. 

“I’m glad you’re all alright.” Lance’s voice has gone gruff again again. “I don’t know what would happen if-”

“We’re fine, Lance.” Allura soothes. “No permanent damage done.”

All eyes turn towards the fallen prince who tried to take her head off. 

Hunk looked between the two royals. “We’re gonna do more than lock him up this time, right? I mean, he totally just turned on us. Who knows what else he was planning?” 

“I do,” Lance muttered under his breath. Quietly enough that only Keith and Allura turn to glare at him. 

“And, hey, maybe we could ransom him back to the Empire!” Hunk said hopefully.

“Unlikely.” 

There’s an uncomfortable moment as everyone stares between Keith and Krolia, the two having spoken in perfect tandem down to the irate scoff. 

Keith takes a step closer to the healing pods, “Let’s just-”, and freezes as the lock screen for Shiro’s flashes up before him. He stares at it in surprise, a little annoyed that it showed up without him calling for it. 

“Oh.” Lance said, staring up at Keith and the pod’s lock screen. “Oh!” 

Lance jumps the stairs, crowding into Keith’s space. Two long arms reach around him, the apex of Lance’s chest plate nudging the back of his head slightly as long fingers flash across the hovering message. Warmth bleeds through his back even through both sets of armor and it takes a solid few seconds of typing before the gac drops. 

“Wait a minute! _ You _ set the pod lock?!” 

A string of altean text cycles across the screen before shattering into fragments of light with a soft tinkling noise. 

Lance looks down, “Well, yeah, I mean I-” 

Both freeze. With Lance hunched over the way he is to reach the pod’s front, their noses are only a few inches apart. “I-” 

A low groan interrupts. Everyone’s hands fall to their weapons in a shimmer of transformation- 

_ WHAM! _

_ \- _ only to slowly let go as Romelle spun her branch back up, ready for a second strike. 

“Come on. Wake up again. I dare you.” The blonde glared down at the once-again-bludgeoned prince. “Y-yeah, that’s what I thought!” The few remaining leaves on the bough trembled with her hands. 

_ Boop! _

The pod chimed innocently. Lance drew his arms back, large hands bracketing Keith’s shoulders for a bracing moment. 

“Right.” Keith felt the other take a deep breath, chest plate touching his back again before the exhale ruffled his hair and flowed down over his neck in a wash of warm air. Every nerve tingled in a rush. He swallowed convulsively, it- “I know where Shiro is.” -_ what _. 

“What.”

“_ WHAT?!” _

Lance waggled a finger in his ear, hair blown back and sticking up from the force of the paladin’s combined shout. 

“He’s in the Astral Plane… don’t look at me like that, I don’t get it either.” Lance waved off the volley of disbelieving looks shot his way. “With Allura’s help, I think we can pull him back. But…” Lance paused as though wrestling with something before sighing and scrubbing a hand through his hair. He turned, beckoning at the huddle of alteans. 

“Batri, Jongar, Eraan, c’mere.” As they jogged over he turned to Coran. “Any chance you could, uh.” He pursed his lips before meeting Coran’s gaze square on. “Any chance the castle could handle uploading a new consciousness?” Lance turned and placed a hand on the blue haired altean’s shoulder. “Jongar has a _ gift _ for parsing nuance.” He ignored, or maybe didn’t see, the flush that stole across their face. “I figure, maybe they can help you strip Honerva’s influence without getting rid of the other guy entirely.” 

Keith stares, a complicated tangle churning inside him. Lance wanted to… Was he saying there might be a _ person _, an actual thinking copy of his brother, in there? 

Wasn’t it just… Honverva’s magics? Keith stared at the still closed healing pod. 

Had they been right the first time? Was that a different Shiro? Dread sank into his stomach like a stone. 

“The tricky part, I think, will be timing it so that Shiro has a working body to come back _ to _.” A smile tugged at Lance’s lips, easy as could be. “Sorta figure that Black’ll help us out with that, though.” 

“You can’t just put Shiro back as is?”

Their eyes locked for a moment before Lance too turned to stare at the healing pod, that aching sadness welling up through the cracks in his gaze. 

“...No. Not without killing him.” It takes Keith a second to realise Lance is referring to the clone. He baulks for a moment, wondering blindly why that would _ matter _ before feeling sick at the idea of killing any version of his brother. Lance doesn’t look away from the pod. “I, we - I guess, sort of thought it would just… overwrite him, you know? Like one of Pidge’s codes. You slap a patch with the right pattern into what’s there and, if they’re compatible, it’s like nothing was ever different.” Lance shook his head. “People aren’t that simple.”

The rock reached the bottom. “You _ overwrote _him.” 

Lance nodded. “...Yeah. Just. Gone. Took awhile to get Shiro up to date too. Longer for all of us to realise his memories ended when he, uh,” Lance stutters for the first time, gaze flickering between Keith and the healing pod. “...vanished.” 

He pursed his lips at Keith’s judgemental stare, talking over him quickly. “Look, I don’t wanna say ‘died’! That’s-” Keith’s planned ribbing falls to pieces at the tender look Lance gifts him, “-he’s coming back, Keith. I promise.” 

The dread releases its hold on him, boiled away by the warmth sinking into his bones. 

He’s not sure how long they stand there, long enough for both of them to startle when the green-marked altean taps Lance on the arm. He looks down at her for a moment before nodding.

“Right.” He flashes a smile at Keith before striding over to the cluster of alteans gathered around the ship's controls, stopping to scoop up the blue-black puppy from the floor as it whines up at him pleadingly. The impossible paladin mutters, to himself or the wolf was anyone’s guess, “Seriously, don’t get used to this. You’re going to get waaay too big.” and Keith bit down on a grin. What a soft touch. That dog was going to walk all over- 

“Keith?”

\- _ for fucks sake _ . He’s not ashamed to admit that he has to grit his teeth to avoid jumping in place. Krolia doesn’t make any sound when she moves which was somewhere between awe-inspiring and horrifying because she _ snuck up on him. _

He isn’t _ ready_. 

“I-”

He’s dreamed of this for years. Stared up at the stars and into bullies' faces and into the shadow of the simulator’s cockpit and thought about this a hundred-thousand times and now that it’s here he, _ he- _ Keith blinks. There’s something heavy in his arms, hands just quick enough to catch at the weight suddenly deposited there. Lance’s passing mutter of “ _ Ah, that’s what happened. I get it. Okay, makes sense.” _ does nothing to alleviate Keith’s confusion as yellow-on-black eyes stare beseechingly up at him. 

He opens his mouth and closes it as a wet tongue laps up the underside of his chin. His fingers dig into shaggy fur, already long enough to curl over the pup’s haunches, and something in the back of his brain starts to settle. By the time he looks back up at his- at Krolia’s face, his heart has settled back to a normal beat and her eyes have roved across his face yet another time. 

“...You look so much like your father.” She says. 

His breath catches. No one had ever… well. There hadn’t been anyone left, to say as much. 

“I, yeah. He said that, well, I got your hair and-” Her hand tentatively curls over the edge of his cheek, bruising the soft skin there. “-and eyes.” Her own shimmer wetly. This close he can see little welts along her bottom lip, as though she’d bitten it recently. He did that too, when he was nervous. 

His fingers smoothed through the wolf-thing’s blue fur as it squirmed and settled in his arms.

He knew what to say after all. 

“Dad said to tell you... that’s he the second to the right.” His voice is tight. “And if, if you look up every dusk and every night.” Keith feels his throat close up but this is important. “He’ll be waiting come morning.”

“Oh…” Krolia’s voice goes tight and shallow too and he knows she understands. She blinks back tears and pulls him in slowly, like she’s not quite sure what she’s doing but is determined to get it right. 

It’s so familiar it hurts. His throat burns but it’s okay. If Lance is right and the crazy scheme building around them pays off, soon Shiro will be here to make fun of his mom’s awkward hugs too. He lets his head fall against her arm as they try to figure out how to hold on to one another. 

* * *

It dawns on him later that he should have been self-conscious about… everything. That a few months ago he’d be flustered or sick or furious that it had ever happened much less in a room full of people. 

He shouldn’t have worried. Hunk might be nosey but he wasn’t a bad guy. The strange alteans gave them plenty of space. Pidge nodded from where she was perched half buried in a side-panel and Keith remembered suddenly that she still had a family to find. He nodded back, one lost kid to another. Allura was a bit preoccupied. She’s all but swamped with awe-struck Alteans… who clearly know nothing about Altea and are heartbreakingly confused and torn between their apparent centuries-long worship of Lotor and their recent first-hand witness of what he’s done to their people. Also, somehow Keith gets the feeling that watching a teenage girl literally bludgeon their ‘savior’ not once but twice rubbed whatever was left of the shiny mythos off his highness’ fractured pedestal. 

Pidge and Coran unearth wires and the former bickers amicably with the alteans as they get them into place. Keith moves to help and stops short, blinking as Hunk struggles and tugs to no avail at the resting end of a wire about as wide around as he is. After a few moments, the small blonde altean, broken branch still clenched in one fist, skips over and lifts it single-handedly tugging Hunk back to his feet in the same motion without ever looking behind her. 

Keith steps back after that. 

* * *

Allura stands at the helm, one hand on each control, an altean on either side. Batri and Eraan stand below her on the floor, both of their hands extended up towards the control nearest to them. For a moment it looks, well, a little silly. Posed and ridiculous.

Then they begin to glow. 

It starts small, nothing like the surge that hurled Lotor across the room. It’s a zip under Keith’s skin, a flicker across their cheeks. A soft glow starts under their raised hands, focusing first on the gems on the console and then down, grounded through the rigged wires and into the healing pod. 

The glow seeps up the pod, filling the window with light. It pulses once, twice-

The entire bridge goes dark. 

Keith activates his mother's blade with a flicker of purple light but before he can do more than brace the lights surge back to life with a sharp flare, the bridge flashing briefly pink and blue. 

The air just behind the black command chair zips to life, a blue copy of Shiro standing in abject confusion suddenly _ there _. 

The hologram looks down at his spread hands, something caught between wonder and hysteria playing across his face. “I… You… you kept me?” 

Coran twirled a splicer between his fingers, grin fluffing up his mustache. 

“Well of course number six! You decided to be a paladin, after all.” Not-Shiro, _ and oh gosh they were going to have to think of a name for him weren’t they _, lost his fight against the tear welling in his eyes as Coran smiled softly at him. “Such bonds are not so easily broken.” 

Keith starts to move towards them when a noise pricks his attention. He turns and watches, breath catching in his chest.

The pod hisses open. 

“Shiro!”

White lashes blink slowly open. Keith stares before slanting a glance at Allura, subtly gesturing towards his own hair. The Princess quickly hops down in front of the pod, shrugging quietly at him as she passes. 

“Shiro, can you hear us? Are you alright?”

Shiro rests his weight between Allura’s bracing hands and the pod behind him. He peers blearily around the room. Shiro, Keith thinks, is very confused. Keith can almost track the thoughts as they flicker across his brother’s face.

Are those alteans?

Is that Lance?

What happened to Allura’s hair?

Is that _ me _standing over there?

Keith is ready and waiting to answer any one of those questions... But what comes out of Shiro’s mouth is; “...Where did the _ dog _come from?”

Which is about the point where it all becomes too much at once.

A noise bursts out of Keith’s strangled throat, high pitched but growing louder with each gasping inhale. It’s not until he catches the half-stunned hopelessly-fond look on Krol- on his _ mom’s _ face that he realizes he’s _ laughing_. 

Lance catches his eye and for once, since the day his foot hit a gas pedal, since his father’s captain knocked on the front door, since he woke up in space and realized maybe there was more to that old lie than he thought, all is right.

  
  
  


.

  
  


.

  
  


.

  
  


Like all things, though, it’s not built to last.

It starts slow. Slow enough that Keith doesn’t notice until it’s too late. 

A hit of light where none is. Bright and warm to his eyes, like forgotten motes of sunlight on a dappled day. It’s not until the motes begin to flake and float off into the air that he catches on. 

Blue eyes meet his own again, this time set and serious in a way he knows he never wants to see again... and doesn’t want to ever stop seeing. 

Lance grins, wide and white and achingly sad as Ketih’s eyes go wide in horror. 

He doesn’t look surprised.

“Huh. Guess that did it.” 

His feet seem translucent now, so bright is the glow. Keith feels his breath catch as he watches the light creep up Lance’s shins. 

“_Lance- _”

“Hey, hey, none of that.”

He can feel the tears pricking at the corners of his eyes, knowing without any sort of fact what’s happening before his eyes. Something in his voice catches the attention of the others. They look up and away from where they’ve gently cornered the wolf pup near real-Shiro and Hologram-Shiro, rushing over in a cacophony of gasps and exclamations. 

The grin is warm, blue eyes thawed enough to water themselves as he takes them all in.

“Come on guys, this isn’t sad.”

Hunk, predictably, bursts into tears. 

“Aw, buddy. It’s alright! This is…” The glowing, _ fading_, paladin pauses for a moment, eyes roving over the cluster of paladins as though they were the ones dissolving into nothingness before him. “This is everything I could ever wish for.” He says at last. 

It's speeding up, the light building faster with every word. 

“You’re going to be fine, Hunk. Don’t stop trying new things. Never let your fear stop you from _ living _ and, hey, if you ever need help? You’ve got plenty of people right here to get you started the next time you’re stuck.”

He’s there and then _ not_, across the room in an instant. 

Pidge flinches back out of sheer, belated, reflex before freezing; Lance’s bowed head gently nudging her own for a fraction of a second. A glowing hand plants itself atop Pidge’s head, fingers barely present enough to ruffle shorn locks. 

“You’re going to do amazing things.” The grin is soft, fond. “Try not to name _ everything _ after your dogs, though.”

He turns, tears like trapped starlight trailing down his cheeks. 

“Allura…” His voice is low, rough and ragged and _ torn_. A hundred things unsaid as his see-through hands slowly close over one of her’s. That proud neck bends, a chaste kiss pressed to the princess’ split knuckles. “You’ll be an amazing queen.” 

He straightens back up, grin fixed once more. “Besides, that alone was completely worth it!” 

“Lance…”

He squeezes her hand one last time, backing into the center of the room once more.

“You guys never needed me anyway.”  
  
“That’s not true!” 

It's out of his mouth before Keith even considers it. 

The flash of shock on Lance’s face is disconcerting.

It doesn’t belong on the man who shot the galran prince down surrounded by leaders of freed worlds, who challenged the Princess of Altea, who found and helped liberate the last of the Altean people. He shouldn’t look this startled, this uncomfortable, with being told he’s _ important_. 

He’s on the other before he has room to think. Impulse and action and panic rabbiting his heart beneath his chest.

He’s almost entirely gone, more of an outline than a silhouette. More of an idea, than a person. 

Keith reaches out anyway, hands folding over the not-quite-real shape of this Lance’s chest plate, saying anything that comes to mind, anything that might stop this.

“I need- _ we _ need the Lance who’s got our backs, who’s- annoying and stupid and knows exactly what he’s got to offer!”

Lance shakes his head. Rubs his thumbs along Keith’s cheekbones, wipes away the tears gathering there with soft, translucent fingers. Keith tries to trap them there, between his face and his own hand. 

“Of course we need you! La-”

He doesn't expect the pressure against him, stopping the flood of protests at the source. 

Warm and soft and if it weren’t for the inhales echoing around him Keith might have convinced himself he imagined it.

He stares, dumb, as Lance pulls away and straightens back to his full height. 

The stranger, shooter, _ Lance_, smiles, edges pained and achingly fond. He looks like he has something to say, eyes bouncing from face to face as he the light within him shines brighter. 

In the end, he says nothing. 

He just keeps that grin on his face, shoots a pair of finger guns, and winks as his form pulses with light, burning brighter as his edges, features, are peacefully burned away. 

The light flares suddenly, wiping away what was left of the grown paladins’ outline in a flash bright enough to blind everyone in the room. 

“Lance!”

Keith charges forward, closing those few steps the other put between them, blind and unknowing and certain that there’s _ something _ he can do if only he can just _ reach _-

  
  
  


-Lance,_ their Lance_, sixteen and scrawny and in the blue armor, collapses into Keith’s outstretched arms. 

Flecks of light drip and crackle off his hair, his hands, his face. His unmarked cheeks shimmer, for just a heartbeat, azure blue beneath closed eyes.

They scrunch tight in discomfort as Keith is driven to one knee under Lance’s (their Lance, not that Lance, for all they smell nearly the same but different-) dead weight. 

He clutches the teen close to his chest, watching, paranoid, until all the light has faded away; leaving just the breathing paladin, solid and firm and warm, in his grasp.

“Whas goin’ on?”

Keith just draws him closer, relieved enough to not even grunt as Hunk hits them both sideways in some sort of desperate embrace. Lance’s sleepy sounding grunts jump an octave as Pidge piles atop the three of them and even Allura flings herself to the ground to join their pile. Keith presses his face to Lance’s hair, breathes deep, feeling the warmth of them pressing around him.

“Don’t forget this one, alright?”

He looks up and meets his mother’s eyes, familiar only in color, and watches as she smiles awkwardly back at him and the universes’ only hope in a tangle of limbs on the floor of an ancient castle. 

They’re going to be okay.

[Lance made sure of it.]

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ...of course, it may not be over yet!  
Lance wipes out his own / canon's timeline via all the changes he’s made.  
Keith meets Krolia early - which is IMPORTANT to me dang it.  
Clone Shiro has been cleansed of Haggar's influence and uploaded into the Castleship... so Haggar is completely blind as to what’s happening in Voltron Alliance & Team Voltron has a new ally to help out!  
Lotor gets caught before his ship is anywhere near ready.  
The invasion of Earth hasn’t started - probably isn’t anywhere in the cards between the galra’s now gaping power vacuum and the fact that they didn’t lose three years fighting Lotor!  
Lotor, speaking of, is LOCKED UP AGAIN... and possibly suffering brain damage, but he’s not DEAD. Yet.  
{"Young" Lance: “Red wants to bite off this guy’s head. He promises he’ll be neat about it and why do I know that!?”}  
The lesbians are out there somewhere living their best lives, pushing people down stairs and nursing headaches (poor Axca trying to ride herd on her lonesome).  
Zarkon is still alive. Badly injured - but alive. Plot didn't progress up to patricide remember?  
Haggar is still out there.  
Voltron Alliance is still STRONG!  
Krolia is back, bitches and wants Keith to stay with Voltron (ooooh baby; KROLIA AND KOLIVAN TENSIONS. “You did what to my son?” - “You sent him on which missions?”)  
Lance wants Keith to stay with Voltron (and there’s still these echoes in his head - so much regret that isn’t his…) and he’s strangely not afraid to voice those sudden opinions, even if he ends up tripping over his words in front of Allura and Shiro and the galra-that’s-obviously-Keith’s-mother (seriously? They look exactly alike guys how are you not seeing this?!).  
Shiro doesn't have to go back to fighting!!  
Since Keith goes back into Black, Shiro can go to Earth with the Alliance - you know, where Adam is still very much ALIVE, and coordinate from there!  
So many good things.
> 
> P.S. The 'complete' marker is sort of a lie - look forward to a 'sequel' soon which is honestly what I'm calling the OUTTAKES/BLOOPERS comprised of all the scenes I wrote and cut in the process of this story & why they're not in here.


	5. Lance Interlude

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lance Interlude

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> \- also a WIP (its meant to be scattered because, of course, he isn't really all there)

“Krolia!” 

The intruder, human - he was human - what in the sacred seven was he doing here, was almost cloyingly cheerful. The smile hardly faltered even as he winced back into the bulkhead as the barrel of her gun swung towards him.

“Don’t shoot! I’m a paladin of Voltron!”

Krolia stares, unimpressed. After a moment she sighs and lowers the gun. Her cover was blown the moment the so called Paladin didn’t shoot her. Even if the sound were cut, there’s no masking that sort of consideration. 

It went through the shredder when he addressed her by name, the stupid overblown-

She huffs and stalks over to the control panel. If she truly was about to be forced out she might as well...

“What are you doing?”

“I’m setting the monster they created on them.”

She glanced back over and peered quisically at his admiring gaze, “What?”

“Huh? Oh,” He grinned sheepishly and rubbed the stock of his gun with a finger. Nervous tick? “Just - I see where Keith gets it from.”

She has him against the wall with a blade to his throat before he draws a second breath.

“You know my son.”

“Ah!” He scrambled half-heartedly against her hold for a tick before leaning further into the wall, “Yeah. Okay. Probably should have led with that.” 

* * *

  
Lance crosses a leg over his knee and does his best not to let it bounce. 

He is not gonna feel guilty over this. Not one iota. Not even a little itsy bitsy bit. 

Nope. No. Nuh-uh. 

Red rumbles under his hands and heart and Mary and Joseph has he _ missed _ them. Moving from Blue to Red had been agonizing. 

He’d never expected that it was just the first loss of many. 

He presses his face close to the consol, breathes deep.

Red roils through his head, pawing through memories and thoughts in flashes of heat and rage and _ worry-fear-fight _! 

Yeah, he didn’t much like what was coming either. 

Which was why he was here, back in Red, in the first place. 

Red’s thrusters flare to life. The comm line beeps.

...He’d been so certain he was dead when he woke up in Red’s cockpit. 

Certain that whatever waited for him beyond the veil had to be part of his best memories, had to be the best part of all he’d ever known. 

With his family still alive, why wouldn’t his spirit (quintessence? Man, nearly a decade of stumbling through the secrets of alchemy with Romelle and the others and he _ still _ wasn’t sure what the fifth element was) go searching for Allura? 

And with Allura, were the Lions. Simple as that. 

He hadn’t met enough telepaths to know for sure, but he had a pretty solid idea of what being metaphysically tackled felt like now. Red had bowled him over, rolled him between their paws and shoved lava into his veins. 

It was the warmest welcome, no pun intended, he’d ever received. 

Of course, there was the small detail of Red not taking his request to fly off to find Allura seriously. 

They seemed convinced she was in the castle already and he just needed to walk out and find her, which, of course, he absolutely wasn’t about to do because Red was never letting him out of hishertheir sights again.

That set off a few alarm bells. 

Staring with; the castle we blew up? And ending somewhere around Red grumbling about having to move the pedals all over again.

Lance blinked, stunned and dumbstruck as the image of a seventeen-year-old Keith scowling and kicking at air as his feet failed to come anywhere near the under-console controls unfurled behind his eyes. 

Half-breed teenagers and fully grown Altean men were nearly a foot apart in height, after all. 

Keith had, Red confides, reached the sticks by sitting on the edge of his seat and bracing for take off for the whole first flight. He didn’t know if that made Keith’s flying more impressive or just hilarious.

Hilarious, Lance decides rocking silently with laughter. 

Then Lotor’s voice echoed through the cockpit and his joy-filled tears evaporated with a vengeance. 

He was in the hangar before he remembered standing. The blaster, Red’s blaster, was in his hands. A shot already hot in the chamber before he was halfway across the room. 

His hands don’t shake. He won’t waver. Not now. 

Never again.

_ That’s not Shiro. _

Keith, young and brittle and scared, holy crow how had he never noticed how scared Keith had been back then? 

It’s nothing, nothing at all to gather Keith close. To reel him in, seventeen and ragged-thin and not an inch over 5’8” if that, and just hold tight. 

He can feel the lithe frame freeze, shiver and slowly sink into his side. That pointed nose digs deep into him and he ignores the small wet patch he can feel gathering along his worn-soft flannel. The boy in his arms is all quicksilver muscle and protruding bones and he can almost feel the rage boil in his guts.

They should _ never _ have let him go to the Blades. 

That was probably their biggest mistake. His biggest mistake. 

He can’t count how many times he’d run through their options and come back to that one moment. 

He should have just taken a shuttle and left. No conversations. No doubts aired. 

The strongest players on the field. 

Keith would have pegged what was wrong with Shiro right away. Would have known something was wrong and how to get the others to listen when he told them as much. 

Then everything would have been-

Ice rushes up from his toes and he feels Red _ hiss _ in outrage. For a second, he’s in the hangar bay, the ships and crates miniscule and meaningless from where hetheywe sit. 

_ Easy, Red. It’s fine. Thought they might. It’ll be okay. _

Then, peace. Like maybe it had all just been a dream...

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  


And then he’d woken up and found himself on the castle’s unforgiving floor. 

No one ever tried to catch him when he came out of those things and it looked like no one ever would. 

Oh well.

Red’s snarl rattled through his head, forcing him to toss it from side to side to sift out what was trapped ice and what was being said around him. 

...and wow, good Lord was it awkward. If he’s being honest, he hasn’t seen any of them in years. Deca-phoebs, even. 

Needless to say, it’d been long enough that he probably recognized the young faces staring at him better than the ones he ought to know. 

None of which helped him in the least with the entire traumatic cluster that was Allura - alive and young and vibrant. 

And so very angry. Gosh he’d forgotten that she was running off like 80% directed rage, 5% goo and a solid 15% of tooth-gritting optimism. The kind where you’d crack your own teeth before you stared reality in the eye. It was that 15% that lead to them being on speaking terms to begin with.

Like called to like, after all. 

Well, sometimes. Sometimes like ran off and left you for bigger and better and sometimes it turned your lost and scattered people into living batteries.

Which was probably what lead to their attempt at romance. Short-lived as it was and yeah, ow, that thought still cut him along its edges even after all these years. 

Years that no one else remembered. 

(Red rumbled through him, disagreeing even as they groused over his first two, and very boring he could now admit, years on Earth.)

Because they had yet to happen. Maybe wouldn’t ever happen. Wouldn’t that be nice. 

Keith’s scream, that choking cry that echoed through the ship, rang in his ears for varga. It bounced around his skull with every dismissal and dodge Kolivan attempted. 

He still shouldn't have lost his temper. 

He hadn’t shifted unprompted in years. It would have been embarrassing if any one knew enough to call him out for it. Luckily they’d had extra sets of clothes set aside. For who, he had no idea. Why _ were _ there so many sets of this armor anyw-

-Red grumbled at him and, right, the thing, they were doing it. 

“Lance,” Hunk’s voice echoed through the comms two notes from panic. Looked like his time was up. “Lance, buddy, where are you going?”

Hunk’s concern was nice but was far far too late, _ years too late, _to do any good. Coran waved from the hangar controls as Red’s thrusters flared and they peeled out of the shoot. 

He’d forgotten how much fun that was!

Hunk’s voice went strangled. “Lance! What do you think you’re-” 

Lance reached over and flicked the comms off. 

Coordinates roll up on the far left screen. Maybe this Allura would live long enough to learn not to leave everything stored in the Bridge control columns. 

Pfff, “two phoebes ETA” his foot. _ Ready to break some records? _

The Red Lion roared.

* * *

  
Krolia lets him away from the wall after a few minutes. 

He doesn’t get his comm back nearly as quickly. She swipes through his saved images, muttering about usefulness and storage capacity.

“I had a few geniuses tweak it.” He brushes himself off, watching her flash through with a speed usually reserved for filtering out candidates from bad hookup apps.

“Besides, doesn't seem like you’re complaining.”

“Do you capture an image of everything you set eyes on?”

“Just the pretty stuff.”

She flips around the screen. A photo of Keith, maybe twenty-one or so, wrist deep in soil and grinning as Sylvio slams a sunhat over his head glows back at him. 

Lance flushes bright red and flails, trying and failing to reclaim his comm.   
  


* * *

He didn’t mean to. He’d forgotten what it was like to feel this angry. To really, truly, feel something at all. 

He didn’t mean to lose his temper.

Red’s anger, boiling and potent and distilled, not like fine-wine in an earth cellar but like tetrahydroxic acid in a subterranean volcano on Quxny, prowls through the back of his head. It sits on the back of his tongue and warms him even as he can feel it scorch and sear and shore up all the broken jagged edges he’s bundled together. 

He didn’t mean to crash the Alliance gathering. 

He knew it was going on. Remembered sitting in a chair not too far from Hunk as they wowed and ooed the crowds and were hit, dumbstruck, by the joint news from Allura and Shiro about the chance they were going to take. About the hope they were going to invest towards a better, more peaceful, future. 

He didn’t mean it. 

He wasn’t even sure Allura even _ knew _ about Lotor’s history yet. Wasn’t sure if it’d come up between them sooner than Oriande or if that truly had been the point of no return. 

It didn’t matter. He had what he needed. 

Pidge could probably crack open the locks he added to the clone’s pod if she wanted to.

...Who was he kidding, if she had half a mind to she definitely could and would have time to write a critique to spare. 

But Keith, wherever he had holed up, wouldn’t be able to and that was all that mattered. 

* * *

“What the cheese was that?!”

Red grumbled irritably, not liking that the-whatever-it-was had even grazed them as it crashed past onto the whale below. 

“Look, I don’t have eyes in the back of my head. You’re the one with scanners! How come _ you _ didn’t pick it- hey!”

Krolia shifted her feet as the Lion suddenly dove towards the whale’s atmosphere. 

“You know what, fine! Fine. Cats, I swear. Always gotta know things.” 

They dove downwards, pulling even with the object after a few seconds. It looked a little like a comet but less - rocky? It was weird. There was something off about the tail... Lance squinted and then flailed, pulling them up at the last second, close enough for the tips of Red’s claws to score the ground. 

“Ah...ha…” He looked over at Krolia and winced. She didn’t look impressed. 

Red banked, that end-over-tail flip that he and Lance preferred and tended to mess up pretty much everyone else, zooming back to nose at whatever it was that just planted itself six feet into the surface of a space whale. 

“Hnn…” 

Lance leaned back and pouted at Krolia’s scowling face.

“Oh come on, a pit stop shouldn’t hurt. ”

“This entire rift is filled with dark stars.” At the human’s blank look she shook her head. “Time collapses near dark stars. This, coupled with the intense emissions of solar flares in the Abyss, can trigger glimpses of the past and future.”

This was the first he’d heard of anything like that. 

...He wondered what his Keith had seen. Maybe that’d been why he’d come back so centered. Nothing like a little forced retrospective therapy and a solid guarantee of your future to settle your wild ways.

Huh. Lance eyed the arctic light things dancing just on the edge of the horizon. The future… there was a thought. If he knew what was coming he wouldn’t need Lotor kicking to keep ahead for awhile. If they-

“I don’t like that face.”

He blinked out of his thoughts, scowling at Krolia. What was it with alien women and his features? 

“Whatever thought caused that expression is not happening.”

“...Utilizing the weird time-warps around here to peek a glimpse into the future so we can change it?”

Krolia stared at him for a long moment before closing her eyes and heaving a sigh. She waved the still glowing phone screen through the air at him. “They are also rumored show the past.”

The self-proclaimed 'not-altean' blinked at her. She flipped to yet another photo. “It’s not a private viewing.”

Lance swiped for the phone, missed, spilled out of the already rotating chair, and staggered to his feet after the ninja. 

Krolia stepped once to the left, back slightly, and let him shoot past her on his third swipe through the door towards the exit ramp.

“Oh come on!”

“No.”

Lance regained his balance and sighed, ignoring Red’s weird laughter. The lights were distant on the horizon and, based off Red’s scanners, there was plenty of time before any flare. 

They might as well see what hit them.

* * *

Blue eyes blinked down at gold. 

It was very clearly a cosmic wolf. 

It was very clearly Cosmo, unless the weird blue markings were totally universal. Lance figured they weren’t.

He eyed the little blue-black canine. It eyed him back.

He sure was smaller than Lance remembered. Granted the darn thing eventually grew to be the size of an RV so that wasn’t saying much, but still, Tiny. Itsy-bitsy even. 

He took in the little paws and floppy triangle shaped ears and pink nose and felt something in his heart slide into goop. 

“Awww, look at you! ”

Those ears perked halfway up at his tone, radar dishes too big and heavy for the wolf’s tiny head. The little blue-furred chest started to heave and before long the puppy, and _ oh man _ was he a puppy, panted happily as Lance cooed over him. The little tail thwap thwap thwapped into the crater made by the cub’s clumsy landing as a big doggy smile stole over the little predator’s jowls.

Krolia’s arms remained crossed. 

(While she was reluctantly impressed by how pacified the cosmic wolf seemed to be, she was also concerned. The paladin’s mannerisms were suddenly strongly altered. Was the human broken? Had the wolf done something to the man?

Her human had never exhibited this sort of behavior, so perhaps the paladin was compromised. Then again, she’d not seen her human around animals with any frequency. The large equines were the sole exception and there weren’t many things in the cosmos like them.)

The human noticed her stare, poor reaction time, and intuited her concern appropriately, which was unexpected given their prior interactions. 

“Huh? Oh, it’s just how we talk to dogs. There’s something about the vocal range that’s soothing to them. Isn’t that right pretty-pupper! Handsome boy, you are, yes you are!”

“...That is a cosmic wolf.”

The Red Paladin waved a dismissive hand, the other firmly planted far too close to those rows of teeth as he scritched at the wolf cub’s large ears. Ordinarily, it would be of no concern to her. It was his hand to lose. However, she needed him intact and capable of piloting his Lion. There wasn’t any going back to the Empire and that Lion of Voltron was her ticket to her son. 

The juvenile's leg starts to beat against the ground, hindquarters wiggling as though it were attempting to move and somehow failing. 

It locks eyes with her, blue on black not wavering as it attempts to stare her down from the man’s shins. 

She lifts her upper lip and growls softly. 

It growled back her, fluff arching out as it stepped defensively around the human’s legs. How curious. 

“Hey!”

She watched, wide-eyed, as the man plucked the wolf up by the back of its neck and shook it gently. One large hand clamped over the cub’s head, fingers curling easily over the wolf’s muzzle. 

“No! Don’t growl at Krolia. She’s your grandma... Wolfma? Grandwolf?” Blue eyes inexplicably looked over to her, as though she had any idea what he was going on about this time. 

“Don’t _ both _ of you look at me like that - come on!”

A muffled whine drew Lance’s attention back to the puppy in his grasp.

The pup’s tail wags as much as it is able, curled submissively through its own legs. It thuds tentatively against the human’s stomach. He just sighs and adjusts his grip, less of a scruff and more of a cradle, until the little creature is belly up in the human’s arms with its nose tucked near the human’s collarbone. 

Lance sighs and rubs a hand over the pink puppy belly. “Don’t get used to this, buddy. This is a one-time deal. You are gonna get way too big to carry.” 

Cosmo just yips and tries to lick the scruff off his chin. 

* * *

  
One moment he was appreciating the cool water and wondering if following the stream might lead them to Romelle’s old colony, the next he was dodging a strike aimed to take his head off. Typical. Never a dull moment in his life.

“Hey! What’s the-” Lance froze and took in the blonde hair and familiar scowl. “Romelle?!”

The tree branch swung back at his face with a vengeance. It slammed into the earth with far more force than it had any right to, freaking Alteans, as Lance threw himself up the river bank. 

Thank goodness he left Cosmo in Red. Little guy might have gone for her ankles and then where would they be?

“What do you know about Lotor!”

“Woah! Hey, hold on a second-”

“Are you working with him?” Swing. “Why are you here?” Swing. “How do you know my name? I know everyone in the colony and I don’t recognize yo-aaaah!”

Lance glared down at the blonde, unamused as the branch smacks into his hand. He can feel heat lick up his arms. 

_ Easy, Red. She’s a friend… sorta. _

It’s weird to see the woman he’d watched claw her way through alchemical research scream and flail like this. 

“Will you calm down!? For cripes sake! I’m trying to answer you!”

The whirr of a charging blaster pulls both of their attention to the tree line. Romelle pales drastically at the sight of the armed galran woman, tugging on her branch with desperate fervor. Lance lets go with a wince, subtly flexing his fingers to ease the sting. Gamely, Romelle turns and banished her makeshift weapon at Krolia.

“T-take me to Lotor!”

“Yeah okay, okay, but that might be a little tricky!”

The Altean shook the branch menacingly, backing up to keep both of them in her sight. “Oh yeah? Why would that be?”

“I shot him.”

Krolia looked at Lance, “You shot him?”

Lance nodded, “I shot him.”

Korlia looked reluctantly impressed. Romelle lowers her tree branch. 

“Really?”

Lance lowered one hand to draw a little x over his heart. “In the chest. Three times.” He took in the mutual stares of disbelief the women were shooting him. “Cross my heart! Left him in cryofreeze with the rest of Voltron.” 

...whether he was still a popsicle was up in the air. Probably best not to say that though. 

“You’re with Voltron?”

Lance sighed and rolled his head to look over at Krolia. “Is it the stubble? I’m thinking its the stubble. I thought the armor was pretty, you know, distinctive!”

Krolia shrugged, slipping both her blaster and blade back into place. It could very well be the stubble. 

* * *

“...join the Paladins of Voltron!”

Lance jolts back to attention as Krolia pulls her elbow away from his ribs. 

Nearly forty pointy-eared heads swiveled towards him, expectant.

He eyed the crowd of alteans, trying to judge the number of volunteers against the dimensions of Red’s hold. 

“Uh… I think we’ll all fit?”

It was weird seeing them again. Weirder still seeing them like this.

There was Jongar, who’d had zero ability to wield quintessence but could decode and recode in his sleep. Mispa, who never strayed too far from her little brother, Arak, and looked years younger in the colony clothing. Otrun, who tripped over his own two feet more often than not. Cerreste, who had to have at least one cup of caf every six hours or she’d conk out the second she sat down. Pirrq and Batri and Luran it went on and on as they streamed into the Red Lion.

So many familiar faces once again staring at him, seeing him only as a stranger. 

Red reached in and shook his bones, comforting touch searing and fond and exasperated all at once. 

_ All right, all right. Fair point. You knew me, even like this. Nothing gets passed you, huh? _

The rumbling grew smug. Images pulled and scattered through Lance’s head. 

The fight to keep the Galran cruiser distracted while Keith made his way to the target inside, throwing himself in front of the blast to shield Alfor’s-Coran, the appalling silence from the Blade’s black-hole surrounded base, the flash-burn amusement as Blue froze their own mouth shut, the searing in his blood when Red first called him to the chair.

**< Knew you the first time you screamed. Knew when you insisted we attack, so worried and concerned for that reckless boy. Knew when you tried to leave, when you tried to hand him your heart- >**

Lance physically and mentally reared back, _OKAY! Alright, I get it! Don’t remind me, for cripes sake. I’m traveling with his _ mother _ you smug- _

Lance blinked, breaking his own train of thought away from purple eyes and long hair and skin-tight marmoran suits as something occurred to him. He squinted, rocking back on his heels to stare up at the underside of Red’s jaw. 

He had been in the Blue Lion for half of those memories. The freezing, the screaming, the storming the mamoran base. Something inside him unmoores, completely and utterly blindsided. 

_ You knew THEN!? _

They always knew. Would always know. That was how it worked. 

Red brushed aside Lance’s niggling doubts.

Black was stubborn. Time passed differently for them. Which, Red groused, was an excuse and a poor one at that. They clung to the past and idled for the future. They were inevitable. Why rush what was going to reach them regardless?

Red never forgave Black for being able to sleep in the Castle of Lions for all those years. Not while Green healed and Blue hid and Yellow did their best to curb Red’s unfathomable wrath as they sat alone, surrounded by m_ur_d**er_e_**_r_s and **t**r**ai**t ** _ors, killers of kin and oathbreakers-_ **

“Lance.”

He jumped, heart pounding as Red’s rage cut off like a knife. What… what just-? 

Krolia peered up at him, head tilted in concern. Dios, she looked so much like Keith. Down to the micro-expressions and inability to express concern like a normal person. He shook himself, stepping away from both Red and Krolia’s grasp. 

“Sorry. Zoned out there.” 

His heart beat loudly in his ears. All this time and he’d never known. _No wonder you let Keith chase Zarkon down. _ Ten thousand years of being his prisoner. 

Lance’s fingers itched, his bayard was right there and the gaping chasm inside him tore away at-

“Here.”

Lance blinks, his arms suddenly full of space-puppy. 

Cosmo, darn he still wasn’t 100% that this was that Cosmo but then how many intergalactic space wolves could there be in the Quantum Abyss, panted doggedly into his face. 

Lance leaned back, nose wrinkling against smelly puppy-breath.

Krolia nodded once, like she was satisfied, and stalked up the ramp. Romelle bounded over and met her halfway up, the blonde’s energetic skips a hilarious contrast to the galran woman’s precise steps. 

“...What just happened.”

Cosmo licks a wet stripe up his face.

* * *

Lance has no idea how this went for Keith the first time around but he figured if he was going to break the rules, he might as well do them with style. 

Or, in this case, with a vengeance. 

Specifically Romelle’s vengeance. In retrospect, her insistence on trying to name their every discovery ‘Bandor-something’ made a lot of terrible sense.

Krolia was just in it to learn more about the concentrated quintessence. 

On the one hand, Lance was glad to learn that, despite the many horrible things it seemed she’d done in the name of defying the Empire, draining others of their life force for power hadn’t occurred to Krolia as a viable option. 

On the other, he wasn’t sure he was capable of putting a cap on the fall out when she inevitably realized that’s where her much-coveted quintessence came from. 

He saw so much of Keith in Krolia. Keith, he knew, likely wouldn’t leave the place standing. Probably hadn’t. Which, though appealing, wasn’t something they could realistically do if they wanted to stick to the longer plan. 

Fortunately, there wasn’t much of a security force. 

The less forewarning Lotor or his people had about the colony's brewing independence, the better. The whole plan, get in, save who they could, get back to Voltron, sounded a lot more reasonable in the Red Lion.

Romelle, it turns out, does not believe in stealth. Krolia doesn’t believe in prisoners. Cosmo doesn’t believe that the command ‘stay’ ever applies to him and is bounding excitedly around all of their heels, blinking in and out of existence seemingly at will. 

Lance doesn’t believe this is going to end well but hey, at least everyone else is having a good time.

Even Red seems to be having a blast. They’re smashing up the few and scattered sentry-drones if the happy crunch tear sated-anger he’s got buzzing in his bones means anything. He side eyes Romelle, wondering if she’d have an answer for him or if it was better to wait to ask Allura. He didn’t know if it had to do with the time travel, being older, or the fact that he just isn't human anymore, but he did not remember Red being this chatty.

Lance sighed, attention refocused, as Krolia efficiently silences two more of Romelle’s blunt-force-trauma victims, he could not believe she’d brought the darn branch, and waves his group of, thankfully quieter, alteans through the next checkpoint. 

Disgustingly, but not surprisingly, there’s no registry. The alteans kept here aren’t named or labeled beyond a simple serial number and output metric. It means they can’t narrow their focus down to search for specific people which means they’re forced to go room by room, level by level. 

They’ve been through three chambers so far. 

Most of the alteans are beyond their ability to save. The two they’d pulled from their pods hadn’t lasted more than a dobash before slipping away. 

It’s heart wrenching. 

It looks like they’ve learned from Bandor’s escape. 

The best Lance can offer is that, once they’ve cleared the base, they can leave people behind to open communication to the colony; show the rest of their people what Lotor has done to their family members and see if, together, they’ll be able to reverse the effects.

Personally, he doesn’t have a lot of hope. Once quintessence is mixed it’s impossible to separate it back out into its component parts. Any one who’s too far gone, is too much into the level’s filtration, isn’t likely to wake again. 

But he’s been wrong before. This time, he’ll be glad to be wrong again. 

In the end, they find six alteans strong enough to leave the chambers. 

All of them want to go to the Castle of Lions, which is good because Lance would insist anyway given their fragile health. He wants to shove them into healing-pods _ yesterday _. 

A majority of those who tackled the base have volunteered to stay behind. Either to stand vigil over their found family members or to open what’s going to be the most aggressive communication in the colony’s history with the ignorant members back on the other station. He’s not too worried about the result of that call. The evidence is pretty damning and, besides, Mispa has more or less taken the lead on that charge. Given how hard she’s holding on to her little brother’s hand Lance has no doubt she’ll fight tooth and nail to get every altean on the colony set straight. 

This leaves Lance with about eighteen alteans, not counting the six pulled from the pods, and Romelle on board. 

Red is feeling smug, triumphant. It’s a catching high and when the image pops into his head, he doesn’t fight it off.

The red bayard fits perfectly into the slot. Power surges through his arm like a lightning rod as the consol flares to life. 

He can’t see the changes that come over Red, but he can feel them. A grin spreads over his face, teeth bared in the low lighting of Red’s cockpit as a rocky purr vibrates under his ribcage. Heh. Fastest Lion of Voltron. 

_ You ready? _

The internal comms flick themselves on. Lance clears his throat.

“This is your captain speaking; find a place to brace yourselves and settle in for a short trip!” 

Krolia’s hands clamp down over the back of the headrest without further prompting. Even so, her feet skid as the “not-really-an-Altean-honest” slams the Lion’s sticks forward.

“Let’s go home.”

  
  


“Is that…”

A good third of the Alteans have crammed themselves up into the cockpit, vying for a view. 

The Castle of Lions looms before them.

He looks over at Romelle. “Want to do the honors?” 

Her grin lights up the entire cockpit. It could cut through a particle barrier. 

“...on second thought, let me at least open the comms.”

Coran better be ready…

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As hinted there are two times where Lance argues with Allura about Lotor. Once in private and then a second time at the official meeting (which he crashes). Allura & other POV's in the works. 
> 
> This au is so much fun guys we might end up getting a mini-reboot out of it after all 
> 
> Some mini bloopers / cut scenes next post
> 
> On Cosmo:  
Yes, don’t worry, this is actually canon Cosmo. My theory is that baby Cosmo got separated from his mother and pack and ended up bouncing around the time rifts. He’s younger than he was in canon by quite a bit so he’s a proper puppy and is likely still transitioning onto fully digesting meat. Theory is that if he hadn’t bonded to Keith little Cosmo would have shaken himself off and gone right back to throwing himself through the rifts trying to get home.  
Lance is insistent that Cosmo is Keith’s dog. Cosmo in turn insists that he knows this human best even if he likes the big-one-who-has-food the most. (Hunk and Shiro are the worst ‘feed the dog under the table’ culprits. Pidge was raised better but does give pets when she sees him begging. Keith and Lance are totally the ‘tough parents’ and Cosmo loves them best even if he’ll zap away in a heartbeat after Hunk if the YP heads anywhere near the kitchen.
> 
> On Red’s Wrath:  
Red isn’t just a 10,000+ year old sentient war machine, they’re a PoW who was held by the enemy for ten thousand years.  
It is strongly implied in canon that Red watched Zarkon kill Alfor. And was then held captive by Zarkon and his myriad of Druids and supporters for ten thousand years.  
Ten thousand years of not being able to do anything to avenge Alfor. Of not being able to run, because Red couldn’t risk Zarkon finding the other Lions. Of not being able to risk dropping their particle barrier, because what if the druids forced their way in? Or drained out Red’s quintessence and stuffed something new inside?  
All the while Black slept on, still partially bonded to Zarkon despite all he’d done.  
(And lets not even go on about the fact that Zarkon canonically wore Alfor’s cape as a trophy.)  
You have no idea how pissed off I was that Red didn’t get to squash Zarkon flat beneath their paws. 
> 
> On Red Paladin Lance:  
Guys, I was so excited about the hints that Lance might have ended up being Red’s “First Choice” in the series. Like, confirmation that being a paladin is what Lance was meant to do. That Keith was sort of chosen for Red, but they chose Lance.  
Instead they changed his race and stuck him alone on a farm.  
As per usual, the VA’s lied, the show runners lied, the whole thing was nothing but bait and lies.


End file.
